My Garden for Life

       

              It certainly didn't end the way it started...but everything in between? 

                                                                                           I think they call it "life"~

           I’d set my clock for 5 am to call my friend before he went in for his cancer surgery just to say I'd be praying, and lighting a candle on his behalf…
           I waited til a slightly more decent hour to call my friend next door, who was waiting on her ride to take her to her cataract surgery mid morning…
           In between the two, a call came from another dear friend who, just wrapping her chemo for the fourth time, called to say her latest scans were not what she’d hoped for…It seems there’s still a spot.
            I realize as we age, we all face physical challenges. We have more loved ones with challenges… even more funerals to attend. But the combination of these three conversations all happening before 10 am and I really wasn’t in the mood to think about anything business…anything cookbook-writing…anything “meetings” at all on this otherwise, sunny day. 
            Instead, having set aside a number of slips and packets for the last of the garden planting, I called another friend and asked, “Feel like digging in the dirt?” Because to me, that’s what gardens are for.  
            The left brain in me needs to make sense of mornings like these…why good people must endure such fearful challenges. The Type A in me needs to control something (and since it’s becoming clearer and clearer I control basically nothing, more and more, my garden is where I direct this drive).         
            As a weak compromise and appeasement to my own mental state, I gave myself permission to turn off phones, remove myself from worldly matters for a day, to simply BE in my garden, pulling weeds out of lavender, digging holes to set new plants, and tossing weeds of Johnson and saw grass over the fence to a bunch of eagerly awaiting goofy goat faces, that to me, represent all that’s good about life.         
           Ask anyone what they want in life, and most will answer “happiness” and while yes, I too, love happy days, there are some days for which happy is just not the emotion; but they do line up for reflecting. Ironically, I’ve found these days to bring the deepest insights and/or sense of being fully present and keenly alive and awake. As a result, I no longer ask for happiness alone (for I would fall short of the goal on days like today). Instead, I ask for peace of mind and wisdom to know what to do when I'm basically helpless to make it all better.         
            It’s taken me to this stage of life to grasp that what I long for (and what I think, deep down, all of us long for) is to be able to rally when life calls us to be there. Yes, my prayers and hopes are for clean scans, and I pray with all my heart for perfect health. I pray for doctors’ hands to be guided in surgery and wisdom to prevail when making decisions.        
            But anymore, my prayers are less about asking God to change things “out there” so as to suit my definition of perfection, but rather to change me “in here” so as to know what to do in times like these—no matter the outcome. My wish is to find the meaningful --both in times of happiness as well as times of uncertainty, sadness and downright fear.         
            I can’t control the world, but I can control my take on the world, which only happens when I stop to reflect. And it’s in moments like these that I’ve come to appreciate that a garden is not just about plants you stick in the ground. My garden to me is my refuge, my calming agent, my therapy for days like today when I just need to unplug and allow the many feelings, concerns and emotions play out. 
            That we got everything planted in its little row and have a promising harvest ahead…well, that’s just gravy. But for me, gardening is less about digging in the soil, and more about digging in my soul, and for that reason alone, I recommend it highly.