A Bible Chicks Blog
By Nancy Duarte, Life Coach | Bible Chicks Founder | Life One Earth Ministries

Can I tell you something that changed everything for me?
It was not the cross that broke me open first.
It was the garden.

Not the empty tomb on Sunday morning with the angels and the folded linen and the women running with joy. Not the triumphant moment when death lost and everything the enemy thought he had won got ripped right out of his hands.

The garden. On Thursday night. In the dark. When nobody was watching except a few disciples who kept falling asleep. When the most powerful being who ever walked this earth fell on His face in the dirt and asked His Father if there was another way.

That is the moment that reaches into my chest every single time.
And I think it is the moment we rush past most.

We Skip Saturday

Every year, we move from the sorrow of Good Friday to the celebration of Easter Sunday, and somewhere in between, we lose the garden. We lost on Thursday night. We lose the sweat like drops of blood and are overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death, and the three times He went back to pray the same prayer because once was not enough to carry what He was carrying.

We lose the most human moment in the entire story of salvation.
And I think that costs us something. I think it costs us the permission to be in our own gardens without shame.

Because if we skip the garden, we start to believe that real faith looks like calm acceptance. That surrendering to God means never struggling with the surrender. That trusting His will means never asking if there is another way.

And that is simply not what the scripture shows us.

What Was Actually Happening In That Garden

I want to take you there for a moment. Not the sanitized version. The real one.
Jesus walked into Gethsemane, which means oil press, knowing exactly what was coming. He was not surprised. He had told His disciples many times. He knew about the betrayal, the arrest, the trials, the beatings, and the cross.

And He knew about something even more terrifying than the physical suffering.

He knew that in the hours ahead, He would take upon Himself the sin of every human being who had ever lived or would ever live. And He — who had existed in perfect unbroken communion with His Father from before the foundation of the world — would experience the full weight of separation from God that sin produces. The cry from the cross — My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me — was not confusion. It was the most devastating relational rupture in the history of eternity. And He knew it was coming.

That is what He was carrying into that garden.
Scripture tells us His sweat became like drops of blood. This is not just poetic language. It is a documented medical condition called hematidrosis, in which extreme psychological stress causes the capillaries in the sweat glands to rupture, mixing blood with sweat. His body was reacting to the weight of what He faced.

He was not performing anguish. He was in it. Completely. Fully. As a human being in the most desperate moment any human being has ever faced.
And then He prayed.

The Prayer That Changed Everything

Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me. Nevertheless, not My will but Yours be done.
I have read those words hundreds of times. Every time I reach the end, something happens in me that I cannot fully explain. Those eight words, not my will but Yours, did not come easily. They came after He fell on His face, after He sweated blood, and after He went back to pray the same prayer three times because the first two times were not enough to reach the end.

That, nevertheless, was not the absence of struggle. It was the other side of it.
And that means something profound for every woman reading this right now who is in her own garden. Who has been praying the same prayer over and over and has not yet arrived at the nevertheless. Who is still on her face in the dirt, asking if there is another way.
You are not failing at faith. You are doing exactly what Jesus did.

Three Things The Garden Teaches Us

The first thing is that surrender is not the absence of struggle.
We have been sold a version of faith that says if you really trust God, you will not struggle with surrender. That the peace that passes understanding means you will feel peaceful before the nevertheless arrives. That real faith looks calm from the outside.

But Jesus did not look calm in the garden. He looked desperate. He looked overwhelmed. He looked like a man who needed an angel sent from heaven to strengthen Him just to keep going.

And He was God in the flesh.
So if He struggled with surrender, if the nevertheless came after the anguish and not before it, then your struggle does not mean your faith is weak. It shows that what you are surrendering is real, that it costs you something, and that it matters.

Nevertheless, it always comes after the struggle. That is where it lives.
The second thing is that God meets you in your anxiety.
Luke tells us that an angel appeared and strengthened Him. Not after the prayer was finished. Not after He had fully surrendered and arrived at the nevertheless. In the middle of the anguish. While He was still sweating blood and asking for another way.

God sent strengthening in the middle of the pressing.
That is the pattern. It is not about removing the cup, but about being given what you need to carry it. The peace that passes understanding, as Paul describes in Philippians, is not the peace of having no problems. It is the supernatural peace of being held by Someone whose hands are bigger than all your fears.

He does not wait for you to have it all figured out before He shows up. He meets you in the garden. In the dirt. In the blood and the tears and the third time praying the same desperate prayer. He meets you there.

The third thing is that not my will but Yours is the most powerful prayer you will ever pray.
Eight words. And they changed everything. They changed the entire trajectory of human history. They opened the door to the cross and the resurrection and the empty tomb and every single thing that flows from it, including your salvation and mine.

And those eight words are available to you right now. In whatever garden you are kneeling in tonight. The marriage that is not being restored on your timeline. The diagnosis arrived without your permission. The prodigal who has not yet come home. The dream that has been quiet for so long, you have started to wonder if you heard God wrong.

Not my will but Yours is not to give up. It is not resignation. It is not the prayer of someone who has stopped believing.

It is the highest and most courageous act of faith a person can make. It is saying, I trust You more than I trust my own understanding of what needs to happen here. I trust Your view of this situation more than I trust mine. I trust that what You are doing in the dark is more important than what I can see in the light.
That prayer does not end your story. It is where your story actually begins.

Your Garden Is Not A Detour

I want to say something to every woman reading this who is in a season that feels like a pressing.

Your Gethsemane is not a detour from God’s plan for your life. It is not evidence that He forgot about you or that your prayers are not reaching Him, or that the promises He spoke over you have somehow expired.

The oil press did not destroy the olive. Instead, it was the process that released what was most valuable inside it: the oil, the anointing, the thing that could not come out any other way. The easy seasons never could.

I know that it is hard to hold when you are in the middle of it. I know that when the anguish is real, the cup feels too heavy, you have prayed the same prayer three times, and the angel has not yet arrived — those words can feel like they belong to someone else’s story.
But they belong to you.

And, nevertheless, your nevertheless, is coming.

Not because the cup will necessarily be taken from you. But because the God who met His Son in a garden at midnight is the same God who is present in yours. And He has never once left a woman on her face in the dirt without sending what she needs to get back up.

Come Into The Garden With Us

This is what we do every week in Bible Chicks.
We go to the real places in scripture. Not the comfortable ones. Not the cleaned-up versions. The gardens and the tombs and the moments that show us a God who does not ask us to pretend we are fine before we come to Him.

We bring our real cups, our real prayers, and our real struggles with surrender. And we find, together in community with women who are in their own gardens, that we are not alone in the pressing.

That is what community was always meant to be. Not a place where everyone performs their faith. A place where everyone brings their garden, and nobody has to face the anguish alone.

If you are in a garden season right now, if you are sweating blood over something that feels too heavy to carry, and you have not yet reached your destination, I want you to know something before you close this page.

You are in exactly the right place.

Not because the cup is comfortable. But because the God who meets women in their hardest places is already in yours. And He is not asking you to have it all together before He shows up.

He is asking you to come as you are. Fall on your face if you need to. Pray the same prayer as many times as it takes. And trust that the other side of the anguish is nevertheless on the other side of the anguish.
It always is.

Join Us

Bible Chicks meets weekly on Zoom. We open with prayer. We go deep into scripture. We break into small groups where real women have real conversations about real gardens. And we leave carrying each other in ways that extend far beyond the hour we spend together.
You do not have to have it together to join us. You just have to show up.

Because that is what Jesus did in the garden.
He showed up. He prayed honestly. He struggled with the surrender.
And He chose His Father’s will anyway.
Come do that with us.

Join Bible Chicks at www.duarte.coach/bc

With love and deep faith in what God is doing in your garden,
Nancy Duarte

Life Coach | Bible Chicks Founder | Life One Earth Ministries

Share this with every woman you know who is in a garden season right now. She needs to know that the nevertheless is coming. And she needs to know she does not have to get there alone.

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