I am enough.
It’s my responsibility to share my gifts with the world.
I get to.
I get to.
Gift.
Notes from a Friday in June –
It’s cool this morning. Thick clouds have moved in, and a damp chill is in the air from a late-night rain. I was sweating yesterday, and I’m wearing a sweat jacket today. Gotta love Pennsylvania weather. Pennsylvania weather is a little like Forrest Gump’s iconic box of chocolates: “You never know what you’re gonna get.” I don’t mind, though. It keeps things interesting. Today I will wear sneakers, not sandals, and maybe, when I head out to the garden this afternoon, the temps will be kinder, and the weeds will pull easier.
I’m not sure where my pencil wants to travel today. I’m distracted by the view of a potted bay tree through my kitchen window. A kitchen “herb” I bought almost twenty years ago. She started off in a 4-inch pot and now stands taller than I am. Every winter, because this climate is not conducive to growing bay trees, I drag her heavy and unwieldy pot into the house for the duration of the freeze. She balks at being indoors, preferring fresh air and summer sunshine. By the time spring rolls around, she has staged a revolt by curling up her leaves or letting them drop. Her bedraggled state doesn’t do much for my reputation as a green thumb.
Last week, I proceeded with her usual spring trim, clipping away the dead and brown, reshaping where she had gotten gangly and thin. It wasn’t looking good. And though I had my doubts about her full recovery, with just a week of sunshine and rain she is covered with bursts of bright green. New leaves, unfurling, reaching for all that she’s craved. I can almost hear her saying, “Ahhhhh ….”
I can relate, as I’ve had my own seasons of waiting. I’ve sometimes felt like my beloved bay tree, rootbound in a pot, protected from the cold yet shielded from the sun just the same. Seasons when everything felt cold and gray … and not just because of the weather outside. Times when I have wanted to be free to put down roots in fresh soil and grow. Really grow.
Sometimes things are out of our control.
Check that … Often times things are out of our control.
Nope, try again. How about … Most of the time things are out of our control?
Getting warmer. One more time. Okay, okay. I got it. I got it … EVERYTHING is out of our control … EXCEPT the choices that we make.
That’s it. That’s all we have control over.
That’s all I ever have control over.
I am coming out of a period of waiting and a hard pruning. Several years ago, I lost my dearest friend to cancer, along with the business that we were building together. Since then, my sons have moved out on their own and built beautiful lives for themselves elsewhere. This era has been filled with loss and change. But to be honest? Though I would certainly say “No, thank you,” to the hardest of days, some of the loss I am grateful for. For I didn’t know how burdened I was on the inside. I didn’t realize how hard I was working to keep it all going. To prove my worth. To understand that I didn’t need to do a single thing to be worthy of being here. To believe that my life, my one-and-only precious life, truly mattered. As is.
Just as yours does. As is.
A long winter … time, the gift of time … to see things for what they are, and to let the dead weight curl up and fall away. A long winter of looking inwards (and upwards), along with receiving some help from others in the pruning department.
As much as I wish I could go back and have a chat with my former self, she wasn’t ready. She had to learn what she had to learn and in the time that it took. I know that everything I’ve been through has prepared me for where I am today. Spring follows winter. Seasons of growth follow seasons of rest. And pruning away the dead weight makes the growth all the more glorious. The gaps fill in with more joy, more hope, more gratitude … just more of everything good. Like my beautiful bay tree, who keeps getting taller, year after year, despite her wintertime struggles. She’s a beauty, she is.
Yes, she is.
And she keeps on growing …
❤️ Cath