Tiller

The secret ingredient, he tells me, is chicken poop. It’s late on a Sunday afternoon in June and we’ve finally found the time to put a few plants in the ground for some semblance of a vegetable garden.  He turns the soil in a small section of the bed, amending with precious fertilizer from the neighbor’s coop. He suggests I transplant the lettuce, an uninvited yet welcome guest who shows up perennially, and sometimes in the wrong place.  I’m reluctant to move it, given what I know about flowers and their aversion to an uprooting during the blooming season.  I’m not confident the plant will rebound this summer.

Each one of us sows an enormous amount of seeds in a lifetime.  Some of these seeds we deliberately and lovingly plant with full intention. We take responsibility to water, feed and nurture them as they grow.  We guide them as best we can, give attention and direction we hope will lead to a bumper crop.  We love them into the harvest, ripe to be plucked and shared with the world.

Other seeds we may not even be aware we are sowing.  The seed of perspective inspiring an adversary to see things differently, or the seed of a new idea sparked into fruition.  The seed of a question propelling another in a new direction. Or the seed of wisdom causing someone to reconsider a decision. It takes someone coming back to us saying, “Hey, you’ve changed my life,” for us to even know we planted a thought that grew, that we’ve made a difference.

This life is a journey.  We can’t begin to understand our true impact, how we affect every individual we come in contact with.  We can’t anticipate which seeds will germinate and grow and which will never make it out of the ground.  But that’s the beauty of it, and why we need to keep sowing.

 

Every New Year’s Eve we feel compelled to assess the last 525,600 minutes of our lives, but the reality is our work isn’t completed in calendar year blocks.  What if you thought about 2017 in terms of the seeds you’ve sown?  And the cultivating you’ve done to bring those seeds along?  I bet you’d feel richer.

I’m grateful I had the courage to sell my house this summer; I see my kids blossoming now that they are out on their own.  I’m grateful I made it my mission to meet talented individuals in my organization; I’m helping grow careers.  I’m grateful I gave myself permission to go on vacation this year, to spend time connecting with family and friends, immersed in the cultures of San Diego, New Orleans, Northern Wisconsin and Seattle.  I’m grateful for every time I stood on my yoga mat and told myself I am enough. I’m grateful for every time I decided to listen to someone who needed to talk. I’m grateful for the new life I’m creating with an amazing partner.

The transplanted lettuce didn’t make it, despite all the water and chicken poop.  But the transplanted me is thriving.  

Happy New Year!

Genesis

Just before check-out guests at this hotel find beside their beds a paper bag holding a hagenia bulb in soil.  Part of Bisate Lodge’s reforestation project, this is a gift they won’t take home. Hands cupped liked shovels they dig and blanket this sapling in the Rwandan earth, and through this act unwittingly assume ownership of the tree it will become. For now, the hotel employees instruct, they must return to see how it grows.

It’s more than just the beginning.  According to Oxford Dictionaries it’s “the origin or mode or formation of something”.  And it’s hard work, I don’t care what anyone says. Doors and websites for new companies open for business only after countless sleepless hours of blood, sweat and yes, sometimes tears. Expectant mothers slog into the delivery room at the nine-month mark anxious to free their bodies from the exhaustion of incubation. God put so much energy into creation even He had to rest on the seventh day. 

I become a gardener at my house on Vineyard Lane.  I choose this house specifically, with intention to raise my family and cultivate roots to spread deep and wide. I till not only my children, but our small patch of land. With a sunny, southern exposure in the front yard, I want textured purple, white and pink perennials.  Delicate, willowy gaura and heavenly scented lavender replace thorny brambleberry. Spiky-centered coneflowers make way for iris, allium and monarda.  Most plants yield fairly easily for me. But one tree holds on for dear life.  I try several times over the years to pull her out, but this tree’s roots gird her, unwilling to surrender to the hacking of my pernicious persistence. Eventually I give up.

Comfortable in this home where we all grew up, even though each of us wants to move on, none of us takes steps to actually do it. We are all stuck when I make the bold move to put the house on the market. With the sign in the front yard I feel pregnant, so focused on the frenzy of preparations, I think about little but the logistics leading up to the moment of change:  Closing the doors on the moving van is a lot like pushing the baby out of the womb.  What now?  I fail to scout within myself, underestimating my feelings in the aftermath; not only the brand new circadian rhythm to be created for the business of life, but the wringer of emotions to fitfully twist through.

The deeper our roots, the more difficult the uprooting. 

There are times over the course of the last (almost) four months where I feel like that tree in my front yard, so unwilling to allow myself to pulled out of the ground even though I am the one doing the pulling. But it makes perfect sense, doesn’t it?  I achieved exactly what I set out to do in that home, richly and religiously fertilizing the soil with the stories of our lives, spreading roots of unimaginable depth and breadth. A life this abundant is jarring to dig up.

With the gift of perspective that a little time brings, I now wonder how we can become more like saplings, make ourselves easier to separate from the ground we’re calling home?  What if we recognized and accepted that new beginnings happen all the time, and allow ourselves to bloom wherever we find ourselves planted?  Changes we ask for, and circumstances we don’t ask for, throw us off the planned course and set us on a new and uncertain path.  We need to permit ourselves a little grace, acknowledging the magnitude of our emotions, granting ourselves the time we need to become comfortable in the new normal. 

New beginnings are hard enough, we make them harder when we fight ourselves. As human beings we are marvels in adaptability, resilience and resourcefulness. When we trust we can find ourselves no matter where we are, we undoubtedly will.

I drive into the old neighborhood periodically and look at my front yard. I do feel a tremendous sense of ownership for all I have cultivated. When spring comes again I will want to take a peek at my beloved and intoxicatingly fragrant Thalia daffodils. I wonder if the new owners will take on the crusade to remove that tree with the unforgiving will.  If they do, they are certainly in for a fight.  She’s a Rose of Sharon.

We are saplings

Forever uprooting

Into new beginnings.

Homing

She tells me I’m special and I just don’t realize it.  No, she’s not my mother patiently cooing words of encouragement to my morose teenaged self.  She’s a co-worker playing an invaluable role in my career.  For years she’s been coaching me to change the way I think about myself, to rise on the inside to the stature I’ve achieved on the outside.  She’s the one who, when I refer to executives in the company, looks at me with that face and says “You are an executive.” I just don’t realize it.

I believe we are somehow programmed to ignore our own specialness.  Opposite of the narcissist incapable of self-awareness broadcasting his grandeur at every turn, we are blind to our majesty, shrugging off the idea that whatever it is we absolutely excel at is extraordinary. 

This is a big mistake.  If you think that thing that you are really passionate about creating, promoting, solving, or eradicating can’t change the world, you’re wrong.

As a token of appreciation for all she does for me, I bring her a box of my Christmas cookies. Over the years she alludes to the fact that this holiday leaves a sour taste in her mouth.  This year she tells me biting into my cookies has changed this. I’m incredulous and immensely touched.  Who knew a box of beautifully packaged and crafted homemade treats could profoundly impact an individual?  She insists it has.  My gift changes her world. I am beaming.

I used to believe this search for emotional gratification is pathetic, a bit embarrassed when I realize I crave job changes, not for more money, but to quench my thirst for appreciation.  What is wrong with me that I can’t be happy with the paycheck and find other avenues where people are more willing to express gratitude?  But it’s a manifestation of our humanity.  Once we’re fortunate enough to be able to afford the basic necessities of food and shelter, we are driven to fulfill our emotional needs.

 

We gingerly put our most personal work out there, willing to risk rejection or indifference because it’s work we are compelled to create, it’s unlike any other and in our heart of hearts we know it’s spectacular.  When we receive accolades we’re fueled to create more.  When we don’t we’re defeated. We want to pack up and take our onlyness elsewhere. Craving the environment that welcomes and celebrates our best selves is not something to shun or feel bad about.  It’s a signal to embrace and act upon.

 

We’re all parched beings craving the elixir of recognition and appreciation, aching to be noticed, to be called out as special. We gravitate towards those people who hydrate us with their generosity to validate our worthiness, to call out our specialness, to point us to our extraordinariness.  They fuel our sparkle and shine so we persist, so we can change the world.

He sees the way the cookies are presented in the box.  He is offered a taste because she’s willing to share.  He comes over to me to let me know how spectacular they are.  He suggests I may have missed my calling.  Have I?  Should I just quit this day job as an executive and open up a seasonal bakery?

After some contemplation I decide I am answering my calling, every day. I am a lot of things.  I am an executive.  I am a baker.  I am an artist. I am a writer. I am a mother.  I am a daughter, sister, aunt, friend.  I am partner to the most extraordinary man. I take on new roles all the time, I bring what only I can bring to them.  When what I offer is cherished and nurtured, I blossom into a greater role.  When it’s not, I know it’s time to make a change to get to that place where who I am is once again honored.  I am changing my world everywhere I go.  I just don’t realize it.