My gardening adventure has not been a total failure. I have tasted the fruits of my labor a few times, just enough to keep me inspired to someday have a luscious and bountiful garden. I like to blame my misfortunes on the hot Arizona sun. For some of you who were not aware, we moved to Arizona in 2018.
Despite the struggles I have encountered while gardening, I have found it peaceful, educational, and spiritual. Just today, as I was getting ready to plant a few things I came to this awareness.
My garden area was rock solid. This was not our regular Arizona ground. I had purchased luscious and loamy soil last year and "fed" the ground of various organic nutrients. However, there was a season when that bed of soil was neglected. Life became busy and as I have not yet figured out how to put together a drip line, I neglected to water it when the temperature here hit over 110 degrees Farenheit. Then, it became cold in the water and I thought to myself, "there is nothing growing there anyways" and I simply ignored the ground. So when I looked through the bedding for the first time in many months, I found that the soil had turned rock hard.
I ran the water across it, however, I only succeeded in wetting the top 1 centimeter of the ground. The rest of the water simply glided off. I had to manually break up the soil and massage the water into the ground. Even then some parts of the ground refused to absorb the water.
Even though the ground needed the water, it could not take it in. The ground was "broken". It had been "damaged" and "deprived" so that it was incapable of reaching forward to take in the very thing it needed to bring back its vitality.
I began to think about people. There are many in our lives that we have written off as "damaged." Or perhaps you consider yourself "damaged" and have given up. It is not that you/we are unable to regain our health and vitality, it is that it takes time to process through the pain, neglect, and suffering. It takes time for you to trust again. We all need community, love, and relationships. However, upon being hurt, we draw back and refuse to open ourselves again despite the fact that it is relationships that we indeed need for our health and vitality.
While I am an introverted, I am an extroverted thinker and I am not shy. I can start up a conversation with just about anyone. I also am challenged when it comes to small talk. I could care less about the weather, sports, or the recent tv show. However, I am genuinely curious and concerned about the wellbeing of the people that comes across the path. Why do I care? Because God cares. What I have come to realize is that most of the people I have met from all walks of life have a deep longing for connection. They feel lonely and desire to belong. Yet, people put up facades that present as if they are doing fine because people are afraid of showing the brokenness within. These are wonderful people with so much to offer but their "nutrients" are tightly bound up inside and due to the lifetime of hurts, disappointments, and shame, they are unable to take in what they need and release their own goodness.
I wanted to share these thoughts because although I am simply throwing it out into the world wide web perhaps this will resonate with someone enough to make an impact on one person's life. Every ground we have an opportunity to impact in a positive way so that it can one day be soft and healthy is meaningful and worthwhile. In the end, how do we want to be remembered and who will remember us. Will our children remember us as a successful business person, or the best parent ever, and which matters more to you? to them?
By thinking about the end, it helps to put the present into proper perspective...
No comments:
Post a Comment