The Gardener's Pain

I love spring.  I love the bursting forth of new life. I love the possibility of new growth. I love green and bright yellow and red and blue. I love the bright rainbows of color after the white and gray of winter. I love to grow stuff. Stuff in my garden, stuff in my flower bed, stuff in the yard. I am NOT a fan of the allergies that come with spring, but I understand the necessity.

I am new to gardening/plant caretaking. It’s only been in the last few years that I have learned to heed my father’s (he is a builder of parks…he knows a thing or two- or a million- about getting things to grow) advice about being a gardener. I remember the first time he told me that I had to prune my rosebushes all the way back to the original stalk to get the best growth. Or when I grew my first tomato plant and he told me to cut all the runners off except for the top two.  I was aghast!

 “REALLY, Daddy? I have to chop down my entire rose bush? It will never grow back!”

“Well, it will still grow without it, but it won’t get strong. There is a great power in pruning.”

And after my first couple of years with leggy, pouty roses and 4 tomatoes to a plant, I wholeheartedly agree. There is power in pruning.

 

This morning, I noticed that my flowerbed in the front yard is coming to life- YAY!  I also noticed that I had done a poor job of putting it to sleep last fall and had not pruned back all the growth last year. In an effort to let it flower just a little longer I let my Morning Glory and Clematis twine together and continue to grow through the very mild fall. By the time I realized they had started their winter hibernation, it was cold and so I left the dry vines on the trellis.  But there she is, starting to climb, my pretty purple Clematis.

When I arrived home this morning, I decided to take down the dry brush and make way for the new spring growth. So I don my gloves, my pruning shears and head to the trellis to cut through the dead branches.  The Clematis is growing beautifully….twining it’s way around all the nasty, dried up, last year’s growth.

Wow…what a visual for my life.

I am growing, beautifully…producing fruit even, beautiful large purple flowers that praise My Great Gardener’s Care….but, somewhere along the way, I forgot to clear out the brush. The dry, brittle, straw-like branches that don’t bring life. And I am climbing and twining my way up those dry branches. Twisting and turning, grabbing hold tight to the ugly, dead parts of my life. Parts that will hold me back, tie me down and choke out the beauty that I am capable of showing.

Just as I don’t want that ugliness in my flower bed, God doesn’t want it in our lives either. So what does a good gardener do? A good gardener prunes away the dead, to make room for the Life.  And, sometimes…there are casualties. Sometimes, the  live, fruit producing branches are so entwined with the dead ones that there are only two choices:

1)      Let all the ugliness stay

OR

2) Prune both away.

IT HURTS!

Does it hurt the Clematis…yes a bit…but she will have more energy to produce more flowers…big beautiful, glorious flowers.

But it really hurts the Gardener! As a gardener, I feel sad for the Clematis…she has done good work, but it is necessary for her to continue to grow. I feel a bit of anxiety, that she will stop growing all together, and thus never fully step into the potential that I see for her. I wonder how much I can prune, without killing the vine altogether.

As my Great Gardener prunes away the dry and dead brush from my life, I wonder if he feels this pain…no wait, I know he must feel this pain. The pain a Father feels when he is disciplining His daughter. I am saddened that I left the dead brush in place and in my zeal to grow for Him have enmeshed my new growth in my old,dead flesh.

Dear Lord, come and prune away the dead and dying brush from my life. Make way for new life in me. I am sorry that I have entangled the gifts that you have given me with the my old habits of doing things. I am ready to cut away the old, even if I must sacrifice some of the new so that I may reflect only your beauty,  only your glory. Make me beautiful in Your eyes, O God, and train me how to grow to Your potential for my life. I love you. Amen.

What dry brush do you need to clean out in order to make way for new growth? 

The Truth About Elvis

This is a true story I wrote several years ago about my first marriage ;). I post it today in honor of my 11th wedding anniversary to my true partner and soulmate. A man who always believes in me, never asks more of me than I can give, and would NEVER trade my love for a pack of cigarettes. I love you, My Chuckles. Thank you for reminding me that true love does not come with conditions.

When I was eight, I married Elvis. No, not the singer... but he did come complete with the black leather jacket, slicked back hair and chops. He even smoked at the tender age of ten and a half. He was so very cool.

We were married in a simple ceremony on the back fire escape of the Episcopal Church on Morningside Drive in Hopkinsville, KY. It was a beautiful fall day; the leaves had just started to turn fiery red and amber gold. He wore his best leather jacket (it had zippers every where) and his good jeans, the one's without the holes in them. I wore my Easter dress and my white patent leather shoes.

I had a fourth grader help me with the marriage license. It seemed only proper to have a marriage license to make the whole thing legal; after all, this was the man of my dreams, and the one I would live with for the rest of my life....after I graduated from elementary school, of course. I was pretty sure one wasn't allowed to buy a house of one's own until you were at least in junior high. We hand wrote the marriage license in ink-the writing utensil of permanence- on Red Chief writing paper (you know, the writing tablet with the lines...I wanted everything to be straight and all.)

Once the legal document was prepared, we talked one of the altar boys from the church into officiating the ceremony and marched up the fire escape to the sounds of my friend, Elizabeth, humming the wedding march. The altar boy said some very official sounding stuff about "sickness and health, life and death, richer or poorer (I just knew we would be some of the richer though)" and then, "husband and wife...you may (insert snort and snicker here) kiss the bride." Elvis leaned over and laid a small peck on my cheek (my first kiss) and it was all official. We were married. I was thrilled. My parents, while they indulged my overactive imagination, were not nearly as happy with my chosen husband as I was. I didn't understand.

You see I had chosen the son of THE prominent figure in our town. He was a Grand Wizard! Of what I didn't know or understand until later, but at the time it seemed such a very big deal. Everybody knew who Elvis' daddy was, and were, on some level, afraid of him. I thought it was a great match. Everybody knew my daddy, too. He was the Parks and Recreation Director- a public figure of great importance in a town the size of Hopkinsville. It was perfect.

For three weeks, I lived in wedded bliss. Elvis would walk by my house on his way to school to "pick me up." He would carry my books for me, and sometimes even hold my hand when no one was around. I was simply mad about him. In return, I would buy him cigarettes at the local Jiffy Mart when Mama sent me for groceries. We would meet on the BMX track behind our houses and trade: a peck on the cheek for a pack of Marlboros.

It was a fair deal, I thought. Until I got caught. My Mama was so mad at me she made me go to my room and sit in the dark for the whole night. I thought about running away to live with my husband's family, but I couldn't get my window open, so I just sat there, miserable, dreaming of my knight in black leather.

I wasn't allowed to buy groceries at the local store after that. Mama had called the owner and told him to, under no circumstances, allow me to purchase cigarettes (I had been telling him they were for her...believable story; she did smoke at the time). Without the cigarettes to bond us together, Elvis and I could find nothing in common. Our relationship disintegrated. He stopped walking by my house in the morning, or looking at me in the halls when we passed for lunchtime, or stopping to say,"Hi" when we were out riding on the BMX track. I went back to the fourth grader to file for divorce. We drew up an official document, signed in cursive and everything, but I had to have the fourth grader "represent" me....Elvis wouldn't even come to the door when I tried to serve him with the papers. I was devastated.

I later discovered that Elvis had been forbidden to see me shortly before our divorce. You see, my daddy had built a basketball court on the “colored” side of town. Elvis' daddy, being a Grand Wizard of the KKK and all, got upset and burned a cross in our yard. I didn't understand what burning crosses had to do with basketball or marrying Elvis, but it did open my eyes to a very cruel reality: people, in general, if left to their own devices, will, eventually, break your heart (especially really cool guys in black leather). I still don't know for sure if Elvis really loved me (and we were torn apart by his parent's bigotry) or my cigarettes (and we were torn apart by my parent's discipline), but I did finally figure out why my parents had discouraged our star-crossed union.

I still have those "official" documents. Both neatly printed on Red Chief tablet paper. The marriage license in ink, supposed to be permanent, forever. The divorce decree in pencil, I didn't want that to be permanent, in case Elvis decided cigarettes were less important to him than his young wife. Both signed in the shaky cursive of a third grader. One forged with all the innocent naiveté of a girl who had not yet begun to truly understand people and ulterior motives. One written with the desperate hope that some terrible misunderstanding had taken place and would all be worked out in time.

But both taught me a very valuable lesson: If you have to trade cigarettes for kisses, don't write anything in ink.

Life is Like a Hard Chair

(Myrtle this one’s for you!)

Sometimes life is like a hard chair. I don’t mean a hard chair that looks like a hard chair. I mean one that looks soft and cushy- inviting, cozy and beautiful. One that you want to sit in. One that matches all your décor and you can just imagine yourself taking home and curling up in to read a good book by the fireplace. One that you dream about owning and stop to look at in the display window when you pass by.

One with the price tag that is so far out of reach that you don’t even bother to go in and try it on for a fit.

How’s that like life? How many of us watch others live the life we think we want for ourselves? Do we see others living seemingly extraordinary existences and somehow seem to belittle our own? We press our faces up against the display window of other’s lives and think “the price tag is too steep, we could never have what others have, but wouldn’t it be fabulous if we did?”

We want the chair badly, dream about the chair, talk about what it would be like to have the chair, hope that friends and family would buy the chair as a gift for us. All we can think about is how perfect that chair in the window would be if we had it. How comfortable, how pretty, how luxurious.

You know the problem with the chair in the window? IT’S HARD.

I’m not talking a little uncomfortable, either….I mean make your butt feel like your sitting on a 2 X 4 hard. I mean prickly splinters in the tushy hard. I mean achy legs and back hard. It is not the cushy comfort that we expect. Some would say perhaps not worth the price tag hard.

The sad thing is not that the chair is hard and uncomfortable, because many of the things in this world that are really worth having are such. The fact that it is not what you expected does not make it not worth having. The sad thing is that you spend so much time lusting after what you think is an easier, more comfortable, cozier existence, only to be disappointed by the reality when you get there. And even worse than that, you miss out on the fact that your “regular, ole average”, your “ordinary” chair with all its lumps and broken springs, is unique and individual and has character. It is comforting and warm and inviting….and maybe most important, accessible to the one’s you love. It is beautiful and timeless and far from ordinary.

When we focus on what other’s have it only leads us to ignore the beauty we have in our own lives. That’s not to say that you should ever stop reaching beyond your comfort zone….for beyond that edge is where real personal growth occurs. Just don’t spend your waking hours desiring a chair you’ve never sat in….at the very least, walk through the door and sit down, try it out…or take the leap and take it home with you….if you decide it is what God really wants for you life, then go get it…

However, in the meantime, grab a good book, light a fire in the fireplace, lovingly and thankfully pat that sturdy chair that you do have on the armrest…and….have a seat!