Volunteer Lessons

If you take a look at the picture to the left, you will see a flower bed FILLED TO THE BRIM with Black-eyed Susan plants just about ready to burst into bloom. It is a sight I wait all year for–bright yellows splashed against a sea of green. It’s hard to believe that such a sight wasn’t at all what we had planned. Let me explain.

We try to keep our flower beds planned and planted in such a way that there is always color popping. Each plant has its moment to shine. Some are early bloomers that come on just as the snow melts. Others reach their pinnacle midsummer. Still others are late bloomers that offer us the last gasps of color and contrast before the winter snows come and blanket all of our beds in white. We even have a few plants, like our irises, that bloom twice each year–don’t ask me why. And yet, even with all our planning, there continue to be surprises.

Last fall, we noticed that the Black-eyed Susans out front were getting thick. So, my spouse cut them back, dug them up, divided, and transplanted them all over our other flower beds. Once again, our front bed looked balanced. 

This year, not only have the Black-eyed Susans come back, but they’ve come back heartier, AND…they’ve spread! Volunteer plants are popping up clear on the other side of this flower bed, bringing their bright pops of yellow to places they’ve never been before–all from the Black-eyed Susan’s amazing ability to self-seed and its hearty rhizome growth! While this is all exciting and beautiful, if left unattended, the Black-eyed Susans will easily overrun the front flower bed and beyond, upsetting our ecologically harmonious system and choking out the other plants waiting for their time to shine. 

The truth is, anytime we leave something unattended for too long, the harmony we have established–in our homes, in our workplaces, in our churches, and in our hearts–runs the risk of becoming upset. If one child requires more hands-on interaction, it generally comes at the expense of being as hands-on with the other children. If one work project demands 10 hours of our time, 5 days per week, that project will come at the expense of the completion of other projects and at the expense of a solid work-life balance. If our worship service is all music, sermon, and movement, it will come at the expense of silence and the ways we experience God therein. If we are filled with anxiety to the point of overflowing, or are preoccupied with deep worry about the future, and even deeper regret over the past, it comes at the expense of our ability to soften into the joy of the present moment. All of it pointing to the really inconvenient truth that what we don’t tend to, tends us. What we don’t keep up with, keeps us.

It’s sort of a tricky thing to notice at first–these volunteer plants popping up in our flower beds or our lives. There’s an extra hour of work here, and then an extra hour there. There’s the afternoon spent hyper-focused on one child’s needs without even checking in with the others. There’s the one worship service that really kept us moving, but never really let us settle in, and there’s the one sleepless night spent dress-rehearsing tragedy. Tiny shoots that seem harmless at first, but left alone, completely overrun whatever is in their path.

So my question for you this week, dear reader, is how is your garden? Are there shoots of anxiety springing up, growing unchecked? Does your work calendar appear to have a life of its own? Are there people under your roof whose needs are being neglected while you tend to the needs of another? Is that person you? Are you telling yourself that everything will all get sorted out “someday” knowing full well “someday” never comes? What needs tending in your garden? What is getting choked out in your life, in your heart? Is it joy? Is it rest? Is it silence? Is it meaningful connection? What is tending you? What is keeping you? 

They’re difficult questions to ask, and even more difficult to answer. Tending and keeping usually are. And yet, the balance we seek can only be found in the work. In the cutting back. In the digging up. In the dividing, in the transplanting–in starting again…again. 

Learning to tend with you,
Pr. Melissa

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