What's It Worth To You?

This week we have been blessed with beautiful, warm weather with more on it's way. Knowing that up where I live the weather can still turn on a last blast of cold before Memorial Day, I take advantage of the current sunshine and summer-like temps and spend as much time as I can outside as I begin to whip this new garden of mine into shape.

When people ask me why I put such a high price on a garden, I tell them that it feeds my spirit, as well as my physical self, and the health and well-being of my non-human neighbors. From the butterflies, to the birds, to the bees, this garden feeds the spirits and bodies of many. When the first leaf of lettuce appears, and the first grape tomato turns red, my body gets a return on it's investment. When the lavender graces my eyes with a splash of color and my nose with that heavenly scent, my whole spirit is rewarded. Yes, I must spend a great deal of my time, my energy, my body (oh, those sore, unused winter muscles) and, yes, even my money, but what I get is a dividend that is more valuable to me than money - a happy, nurtured spirit. I feel at one with Creator and everything that lives and breathes on the earth. Who can put a value on that?

What do you value? What are you willing to spend to have the life you want? What's your "currency?" Is it money? Time? Health? Relationships? What will you do to feed your life? When I garden, I know that even if a storm should flatten all my hard work, the sun will come up again tomorrow and the garden will renew itself over and over, season after season. The return on this investment is endless. I'd say that's a pretty good return on my time and money, wouldn't you? How many of us can say that about the investments we make in the kind of lives we want to live?

So how will you spend your "currency" today? My wish for you is that you choose from your heart, not your wallet, and that your returns are boundless! As for me, my investment today is to free the tulip beds from the first wave of dandelions!

And so it is.

Seeing The Big Picture

Little by little, Spring is starting to make its presence felt in my neck of the woods. The two days of snow showers didn't exactly help the situation , but those hardy little spikes of tulip and daffodil foliage hung in and rewarded me with the first buds of the year yesterday. So I walked out and stood opposite the front of my side of the house to try and get an idea of what the whole thing will look like when everything finally blooms. The hard part is trying to see the big picture because I've never seen this particular garden in full bloom before.

Of course, this got me to thinking about where I am now at the ripe young age of 65 and what the big picture looks like for me (but then you knew where this was going, right?). The spring bulbs just now showing themselves reminded me of our childhoods: growing tall, bursting with color and life. Then the perennials came through - the things we learned to count on, that sustained us and kept coming back when we needed them, like our faith, our education, our life experiences. Eventually we arrived at the place where we started to plant our annuals, those seeds and plants that come and go, that last for a while and then move on to be replaced with something new and different. Finally, the harvest came in and we picked what nourished us through the winter, discarding what didn't make it and learning to perhaps plant something different in that spot next year.

The important lesson here is that we never really see the big picture all at once. We are only privy to certain views from one season to another. The tulips and daffodils are gone by the time the hosta and lamb's ear come up, and the apple blossoms are gone before the apples begin to appear. Instead of frustrating ourselves because we can't always see the rest of our lives laid out before us like a painting, we can enjoy the season we are in at the moment and learn from it. What can I plant in front of the bulbs that will come up when the bulbs finally lay down? What can I plant that will be there when I need it, and how can I brighten up my life with something new and challenging?

For now I must be content with what I can see at this present moment. As I bend down to get a better idea of how many tulips are going to come up right outside my window, I see the beginnings of some other green leaves starting to make its way across the flower beds ... wild strawberries! Gee, I can't wait to see how beautiful that's going to look!

And so it is.

A Lesson In Patience

Where I live there is an extra season squeezed in between winter and spring. It's called Mud Season. It is that time when the five feet of snow that has been gracing your yard has finally all melted, and April Showers takes on a whole new meaning. I devoted a whole chapter of my ebook, "Staying Rooted" (available on Amazon.com) to this subject. Even though the temperature may taunt and tease you with days up in the high 60's and maybe even an occasional 70, it can just as easily fall back down into the 30's over night, with a snow shower thrown in just so Mother Nature can remind us frail humans who is really in charge.

For a frustrated gardener like myself, especially one who has been longing for a real yard to garden in again after 15 years of container gardening on my front porch, the seemingly endless winter that just passed was agony made worse by the fact that unless you own a pair of good garden boots, or "Wellies" as my British girlfriend used to call them, you can't even venture off the concrete path or driveway let alone even think about planting anything. Even yard clean up has to be parceled out to those few days that are warm and dry unless you enjoy sinking up to your ankles in mud.

If I have learned anything at all from all my years of gardening, I have learned the value of patience. Any time I rush ahead to satisfy some childish tantrum, an "I want it now" kind of ego trip, the results are a disaster. All the jumping up and down in the world will not make the tulips, daffodils or crocus come up any faster. It will all come to pass when the optimal conditions are there.

How many times in our lives have we rushed into a situation without taking the time to weigh all of the pros and cons only to be disappointed, or worse, with the outcome? That guy you thought was "the one" that you moved in with after only a few months? The job that you were sure was going to be your career forever? The move across the country that left you feeling alone and adrift in a sea of strangers? I'm not advocating not going after your dreams. If  you are a regular reader of my blog, you know that I am a one-woman cheering section for following your bliss, but any time I didn't balance the desires of my heart with a clear understanding of what I was getting into, I was always disappointed.

It's easy to pull out a dead plant and put in another one. It's a whole lot harder to have to restart your entire life. Mother Nature is the best teacher in the art of learning patience that I have ever seen, and we would do well to take the time to listen to the lesson and watch how beautiful the world is with the results once we have learned it. Even if you have to go out and buy a new pair of boots so you can function while you wait for better weather, it beats getting stuck in the mud every time!

And so it is.

The Gift

I had an entirely different subject planned for this week's post. That is, until I opened up Facebook and saw a post from my oldest daughter. Last week she had asked everyone to join her in praying for a dear friend who was going through her second bout with cancer. The woman, who was in her 40's, was a loving mother, wife, teacher, and an endlessly giving member of her community. So it was with great sadness when I saw this morning's post announcing that she had passed over the weekend. My daughter is, of course, carrying a heavy heart as are my two grandsons who are friends with this woman's son.

It has long ceased to surprise me when synchronicity shows up in my life. Yesterday at church, before I even knew that my daughter's friend had passed, we were having a group discussion on the reading from The Daily Word, a publication of Unity Church (you can find this online at Daily Word.org) . The reading for the day was on being grateful for a new day. We discussed how each of us started our day and how that determined how we lived that day. I shared the idea that I see each and every day as a gift, and that how I use the day is my way of showing gratitude for a gift of such unconditional love. Each and every day is filled with infinite possibilities, unlimited choices and unlimited opportunities to not only live happy and fulfilling lives, but to show our gratitude by using this gift in the service of others. I'm not saying everyone should go and dig wells in Africa or volunteer in a homeless shelter, although both are wonderful ideas. What I am saying is that we can say "thank you for this day" by not squandering this gift. Smile at a total stranger. Help someone carry heavy packages. Offer to pick up groceries for a shut-in, or call a friend in need of some cheering up. When you shine a light on someones day, your own life lights up as well.

We will never know when the day we are currently living will be our last. It will come when it will. I don't want to waste one day in sorrow, negativity or selfishness. I want each and every day to reflect the unconditional love that gave us this gift in the first place. When it is my time to transition, I want people to say, "her life was a gift to all of us." May we all be so rewarded.

And so it is.

The Things We Can Count On

My Dad was fond of the old saying, "There's only two things you can count on : death and taxes." Today I am sitting down, finally, to do my taxes and as I started to pull out all of the paper work, that saying popped into my head. I thought to myself, "Gee, if that's all we have to count on, what's the point of getting up in the morning?" So I shoved the papers aside (just for a little while - I'm "counting" on myself to get it done today), and decided to make a list of other things we can count on that are perhaps a little more uplifting and provide us with a reason to feel good about life:

1. The sun always comes up every day even when it's raining.

2. The seasons always follow one after the other in order (okay winter seemed a bit

longer this year but Spring did finally get here).

3. If we plant a seed in the garden, and nourish it, and give it light, it will grow.

4. If we plant an intention in our heart, and nourish it, and give it light and love,

it will manifest in our lives.

No, I did not slip that last one in just to see if you were paying attention. I know this to be true in my life, as true as numbers 1-3. Sometimes things took longer to manifest because I did not nourish the intention, or I did not give it enough light (attention), or I did not prepare the soil by believing in myself, but as long as I kept weeding out what no longer served me and fertilized it with love and determination, something did grow. It didn't always look like I thought it would and sometimes it was even better than I had envisioned. In fact, sometimes it was completely different from anything I could have imagined and that turned out to be what was in my highest good.

So here's the scoop: there is no one who will have your back and be your biggest cheerleader more than you. When you realize that you can count on yourself to keep moving in the direction of your dreams, there is nothing that you cannot be, do or have, and while you're on your journey, you can count on the fact that the sun will always come up in the morning, that spring will always follow winter, and that your garden will blossom as long as you continue to believe in yourself.

And so it is.

P.S. Here's something else you can count on - my latest ebook, Song Of An Extraordinary Life: Creating A New Soundtrack For Our Third Age, is guaranteed to give you  a whole new perspective on the subject of aging and help you live your "Third Age" the way it was meant to be lived! Available from Amazon Kindle:

www.amazon.com/dp/B00VETGZFU. 

All In Good Time

As President of the board of our local Unity church, one of my duties is to listen to every one's complaints. Whether I like it or not, it's part of the job and often it takes all the strength and faith I have in me to stay calm, centered and just listen rather than react. Yesterday was one such occasion. A woman who was new to our church was very upset with the board because we had decided to move the start time for our service to a half hour later. We share a church building with several other groups and at least three of them are coming out of their services at the same time that we are starting ours. You can imagine the mass of confusion in the hallways not to mention the parking lot. By starting a little later, we not only cut down on some of that confusion, but we have time to meet and greet our fellow "neighbors" at the same time. However, this woman was completely undone by our decision. Her main complaint was that her 5 year old son had to eat his lunch no later than 12:30 and it was obvious that our church just didn't support families! Our prayer chaplain, who was standing next to me at the time, was as taken aback as I was by the level of hostility this woman spewed forth, all because her son was supposedly going to perish if he ate lunch a little later on Sunday!

I would hate to have to live such a rigid, schedule controlled life, wouldn't you? That's like demanding that the daffodils and crocus come up immediately on the first day of Spring regardless of the fact that there is still several inches of snow on top of them. If I put a seed in the ground, and the seed packet said 6 weeks to germination, and at exactly six weeks I still didn't see any shoots, that does not mean that I had to give up gardening forever. It just means that 6 weeks means a 6 week period of optimal conditions. That being said, if we followed all of the directions correctly, the flowers will come up in their own good time when they are ready to.

If we set the intention to grow spiritually, creatively, or emotionally, but give ourselves a time limit to produce results, we are more than likely setting ourselves up for failure and massive disappointment. It's like trying to meditate for the first time and declaring it a lot of hogwash if we didn't reach enlightenment in the first try. Sometimes we have to let go of the outcome and stay present to the process. Do we want an attractive and soothing garden? Then at some point we have to let Mother Nature do what she does best and trust that she knows what's best. If we want to enjoy our spiritual experience, we have to set aside our ego induced rigidity and learn to go with the flow. I have raised two children, a step-child, and have 5 grandchildren, plus great grandchild#1. To the best of my knowledge, none of them suffered irreparable harm from eating lunch a little later. We just gave them a bigger breakfast that day and kept snacks in our bags just in case.

The point is that the best things in life really are worth waiting for, as the old saying goes. Spring will eventually get here all the way, and the plants will eventually make as beautiful a showing as they always do. So, too, will the good things in our lives come to fruition if we just plant the seeds, step back and wait for the roots to take hold. When we trust and let go of having to control the outcome, the most beautiful things will happen.

And so it is.

All That Remains

Sometimes I see an exquisitely landscaped garden, by most people's standards, but somehow when I look at it, it just leaves me cold. It has no personality, no depth. It might just as well have been a movie set for all of the authenticity and personality it reflects. Who are the people who own this garden? What does it tell me about them? Are they the old-fashioned, English country garden type? Do they love tropical plants and warm breezes? Are they committed to sustainable, organic gardens, or do they just hand over some money and tell the landscaper, "Make it gorgeous so the neighbors will rave?"

I think what a garden looks like says a lot about the people who planted it. When you take away all the frills and do-dads, all that really remains is the love that is put into it. With each rose, with each tomato, with each hummingbird feeder, the love of the earth, and of all of us who live on it, reflects out from the garden to all who see it.

Isn't that a great metaphor for life? When you strip away all of the fancy outer layers - the cars, the clothes, the makeup, the houses, etc - all that remains is the pure, authentic person underneath, and the core of each and every one of those authentic people is love. When we love ourselves full out, with no reservations or stipulations, the outer self blossoms. Our smiles are beautiful, our joy is palpable, and our thirst for life is contagious. When someone passes us on the street or sees us in a store, they are drawn to our energy like a bee to a flower. We don't need all of those outer trappings that our culture says we need to shine. Self love has more power than a roof full of solar panels! A beautiful rose starts from the same kind of  seed as every other rose. Whether it grows or doesn't grow only depends on the amount of love and attention it gets from Mother Nature and the one who planted it.

So I guess my question for you is this: what are you planting in your inner garden? Are you loving all that good, rich soil in which to plant your field of dreams? Are you reaching for the sun with your face turned up in expectation? Or is your garden a cold copy from a magazine just like a hundred others? The love you give your inner garden will yield bounty in your outer garden beyond your wildest expectations!

And so it is.