I love spring…
I love to sink my hands into the earth and move it with my hands as I plant my vegetable garden full tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, and zucchini. I usually plant something new too — something that I have never grown before. This year, I took on three new plants: strawberry, blackberry, and sweet potato. (Because I LOVE sweet potato fries!) Year after year, the preparing of the garden area has become routine with rototilling the area, buying new plants or seeds, and getting the fence to keep the critters out, I still love the newness each spring brings. Sometimes, I have forgotten type of tomato I planted so I am greeted with a new surprise when the first few begin to show themselves on their branches. My peppers are lined in a stop sign configuration — (red, yellow, and green) — but for some reason, I always seem to forget which one is the green one and which one is the red one. (The yellow one is always in the middle.)
The rest of the landscaping around my house is centered around the perennials of a lilac tree, hostas, daffodils, clematis, hibiscus, and a hydrangea because I don’t want to have to replant those every year. Like clockwork, they appear exactly where they have learned to grow every year. The mum has begun to grow a little as has the Bleeding Heart plant as well. And no matter how much care and water I give them, some plants die while some grow bigger than I ever imagined.
But this year, I was surprised with some new growth.
You see, I thought this plant was dead. It was brown and twig-like. It looked dead. I knew it wasn’t a weed, but still was trying to figure out where this new growth and vibrant green stem and leaves were coming from. It sprouted so close to the coneflowers, I almost missed it. You can see with the arrow on the right the hard, brown exterior of what was leftover from the last time it was alive. The left arrow shows the new life with green leaves and healthy living stem as it reaches for the nourishment from the sun to continue to grow.
How many of us have thought a part of us was dead?
In order for anything to live, we must cultivate it with care, love, and nourishment. If we don’t, it lies dormant and in the state we last left it and in some cases, it simply fades away and disintegrates into dust as if it had never existed in the first place. As much as we want to help something along, sometimes, it is just best if we leave it alone. That we let it be and we need to just sit back and watch what happens. There are a lot of things we try to control and some things cannot be controlled. No matter how much I wanted that plant to grow or how much I gave it the right amount of water and the sun warmed its roots, it wasn’t going to come out of the darkness of the dirt until it was ready. Not a moment sooner. It would know when it was right, too.
We can look at our lives and think back to times when we did something we haven’t done in years and something stirs within us….when we bring out that guitar and dust it off with a few strums of the strings…when we grab the brushes and paint and throw some color on a piece of canvas…when we pick up the glove and toss that ball around the yard again.
Our past lives are never truly dead. They live within us still. They just are waiting for the right time to be present again. Having lived a life that seems long ago and one that we would accept if it remained silent forever, but something triggers its rebirth. And yet it seems awkwardly familiar in ways that cannot be described and that old feeling of being connected returns once again. That connection can never be severed — no amount of time, distance, or lack of attention can ever separate you from it.
It is a part of you. Interwoven within your heart and soul and captured in moments now found in memories, the essence of you cannot be removed from your being. Perhaps, it lies hidden in your story somewhere on the pages of the past, but it never completely disappears. Your natural instinct kicks in when it shows up again and you pick up where you left off, just as if there had been no delay.
Timing is everything!
Every thing has its own time and it will arrive when it is good and ready — not before. It will find a way to be awakened once again in the randomness of every day life and in the intentional acts of others also. Don’t sit around waiting for something to happen. Carry on. One day, when you least expect it, you will find something growing where you thought only cobwebs and grime was left behind. And in that moment, you will believe in the awakening of something that could not have prevented or encouraged to happen any faster or slower than it did. It would get here when it was ready. It just needed some time.
“I’ve learned to stop rushing things that need time to grow.” – unknown
Michelle A. Homme 2015 ©
