This morning I woke up and found my earring next to my pillow. It was a little silver unicorn stud that Laurel gave me for some memorable holiday a while back. I have no recollection or reason, but it seems I took it out and replaced the back before putting it next to me. I can barely form coherent sentences when I am sleepy, then all of the sudden I surprise myself by having the focused dexterity to remove my earring, and replace the pack on the little post while completely unconscious.
So, it turns out a life of stability has just as many challenges as one of chaos. This has proven to be the season of restoration that I was anticipating. I have been able to spend long afternoons wandering around San Diego with my friend Nikki who is about to have her first baby, bike rides and chats in the sun with Andrea, spending time in my garden coaxing my plants to produce enough vegetables to offer to my neighbors. I have laughed with my family and caught up with them to the point where I don't feel like we are just spending our time together catching up. I spend nearly every day making up for lost time with Colin, an incredible blessing to share my life with one of my dearest friends and most trusted confidants. I have a hard time determining if I feel like this past year and some months has flown by or if it feels like we've been together forever. Either way, it is good.
I planted a garden and then neglected it. I returned to it, finding it still there but dry and sad and wanting of attention from nurturing hand, held together by the miracle of growth and love. It is starting to perk up, beginning to show signs of fruit.
This growth and love is beyond my understanding. How is it that my watering, pruning, and removing of pests ultimately causes a garden to grow new leaves and produce food that will in turn nourish me? There is clearly another element tying my actions (and at times inactions) to the reaction of my garden without witch neither I nor the fruit of my garden would be interdependent. In actuality, the dependance is on that middle substance that ties us together, for if it were not for that there would be no relationship at all.
What I have noticed as of late is that my perspective of that love and growth between me and the garden I love is not always going to be the same. That necessary tension that holds us together, holds us accountable for our actions and what we give to the relationship will not always look the same because it is never the same. Yes, there are times in this season of restoration that I will be watering and giving, there will be times I am gently tearing off dead leaves, and times when I will kill the bugs that threaten the lives of the plants in the garden. But I am not only giving. I must receive. I must accept it when a plant will not yield fruit, or when it has wilted into the ground, or when it is heavy laden with fruit for me.
It might not be that the garden looks to me as its provider of nourishment, it may see me as the one in need, it holding the responsibility of giving me food and even the sheer enjoyment of having it there by my door every time I look for it. This perspective swap may also change how each party understands that love and growth that is between us. All parties understand its importance, maybe though very differently.
I do not have the capacity to articulate exactly what that difference is, or why it is. Perhaps it is something that I understand deep inside of me, like something I have known for most of my life and have been doing without realizing the consequence of its place in me because it is something that occurs quite often without even a second thought. Like how I can take out an earring and put its post back into that little whole in my sleep. I have done it nearly every day since I was 8 years old not paying much mind to it, not realizing that its gotten to a point where I can literally do it in my sleep and didn't realize it until I actually did.
Even if I have known of the existence of myself, the people in my life and the God who is integral in holding us all together by facilitating the love that can grow between us, maybe it took finding it laid bare before I really understood that I don't understand it. I have known it in my gut for a long time, and taken that knowledge for granted... when I was finally challenged in it, I just couldn't explain the differences in each of the three parties perspectives of each other and the God that binds us together. I do recognize that those differences are vital in keeping the relationship alive, keeping each party engaged. Ultimately though, it is that center source of love and growth, God, who has the correct perspective of Himself, myself and the others. That is the one I want, that will take more work than I am up for right now. At least now I know what is in store for me, why this restoration is not really rest, but a new season of striving for more of what the Lord has for me.
This is harder to articulate than a thought when I first wake up.
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