I have been considering my life. I do this all the time--staring at my own belly button is a favorite pastime of mine--but recently I have been actually taking stock of my abilities and my limitations, my desires and my neglects, my loves and my hates, my heart, my spirit, my body, and my mind.
My goodness.
What a difficult thing it is to realize that the age of the mind and the age of the body are two different things. What a difficult thing it is to realize that what we are in our heads, both good and bad, is different from what we are. What a difficult thing it is to say "This dream needs to be carefully wrapped in a piece of lace from a dress we wore when we were young and strong, tucked in a plain brown box and tied with twine, or perhaps with a faded blue ribbon, and placed high on a shelf to be forgotten.".
What an amazing thing it is to look at the moments of our lives and say "I did well here, here, and there." and a sorrowful thing to have to say "But here, here, and there I utterly, completely, shamefully failed.".
Is this a crisis moment? No. A midlife bout of existential angst? <smile> Yes, perhaps.
I think our lives might be a garden...in our youth, we draw up plans and ordered seeds from brightly colored catalogues that show promise of perfect results. We eagerly talk about this dream and that expectation and envision ornate and beautiful flower strewn walks and baskets overflowing with juicy, ripe fruit.
Then the spring comes and it is time! We plant some seeds with diligence, scatter others half-heartedly, and water when we remember. There are some sections of our gardens that we focus on--hopefully on the plants that will sustain us such as faith and love and family and charity.
Sometimes the Lord is merciful and makes even a neglected place in our gardens bear amazing fruit. We carry armloads of unexpected nourishment to our kitchens to carefully and gently process and save.
Or sometimes we turn our backs, letting that fruit rot on the vine, looking at our dream plants or expecting someone else to do the work of keeping the harvest.
And sometimes we can fret and flutter and baby a seed with the hopes it will grow, and it just never does. We keep waiting for the softer rain, the brighter sun, the cooler night to make our dream plant grow, but it never comes.
Then, I think, we get to the moment that I am in and we stand in our garden and take a good look around. We realize that the wind has turned colder, the sun slightly more dim, and there is no time for that dream plant of ours to ever grow to produce fruit. We squint, though, and can see the jars of preserved fruits that are in our cabinets and hope that they are enough to last through the winter. We might even be surprised by the beauty of a quilted, half-pint jar of love or faith or friendship that we canned when we were waiting for our dream plant to grow.
We might lament the dreams that die, or understand that we had limited time and water and focused on those plants of love and mercy and family that needed it more. We might realize that our lives are not, and will never be, a plantation brimming with dominant trees and running brooks and frolicking appaloosa colts that is the showpiece of the whole county--that dream we once held of being so much to so many. We might realize that our lives are a little cottage garden with a broken gate, a few too many weeds, and we just hope that our small bounty is enough to feed those whom we love.
There is a time, I reckon, when it is time to put the seed catalogues away, to put away the dreams of grandeur, and instead water our own little gardens more deeply and purely....perhaps what we should have done in the beginning before our ambitions drove us to believe that we needed to do more and be more.
What an odd thing it is to be in every new age, is it not? I think I will continue to muse on this and consider where my efforts were fruitful, where they were fruitless, and how I can focus more on the eternal. I will, regrettably and ruefully, acknowledge my limitations and pray that the Lord will let fruit grow where I was inept, and I praise Him for His mercy when He proved that He is the one who lets dreams grow and He is the only One with wisdom to prevent some of our dreams from ever taking root.
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