Lenten Renewal

I haven't written for a very long time (as some of you faithful ones have noted). There is a reason...I haven't been myself. This January I crashed into that realization and started looking for solutions to find myself again. One solution was to rent my own space again. It has been wonderful sharing a space with my friend...she has been generous and we have been relatively compatible, but I really am a soloist when it comes to living space. I missed my art work on the walls, my own garden space, talking to myself without getting caught. :-).

So I came upon a little yellow house to rent, only a mile away from the "fun house" with the poetry pole. With great intention, I found a place for every knick-knack and wall hanging. If the piece didn't fit, I stored it, threw it away, or gave it away. Slowly, I am finding a rhythm to my day in this house. I am reading, writing and meditating again in the mornings...renewing my spiritual self...reading at night again. Most importantly, I am addressing old habits (addictions if you will) that have kept me from me. This is the hardest part, being still and silent, grieving if that's what comes up, until I can feel me in my body again. I wake in the mornings in my lavender and white room feeling my spirit hesitating to re-enter this body. "How are you going to treat me today?" it seems to ask.

My little yellow house has some small neglected gardens in front and back. There is a hunk-o-bamboo that appears randomly placed in the middle of the lawn. I was going to try to remove it, but it is too big and too deep. As I looked closer, I realized someone had a plan with this bamboo. Someone left before the plan was complete. It is my job to wait until I can see where that garden wants to go next.

To the right of the front door is a garden bed with lavender and tulips popping up. I planted some baby rust hens and chicks barely visible in the red rock right now, but I know they will spread and acclimate quickly. Purple heather and euphorbia will also fill out nicely in a zero-scape kind of way. Calluna vulgaris, with its downy gray leaves and pink tips, is so rooted in her pot that it takes quite a bit of coaxing to get her out and planted in the new space. I decide to transplant the tulips and other spring bulbs into the center bed where I have planted the proverbial purple lupine, already catching tear drops of rain in its open palm of green.

One tulip, a single leaf, that I think will be shallow and young, easy to move, refuses to reveal its bulb. I dig my trowel past the red rock, inching into clay soil, blindly easing around what I assume is the bulb. Then I press down on the handle, lifting a hunk of soil, no bulb; only the broken stem.

This week I broke a friend's trust. I hurt someone I love. I dug too deep (or not deep enough), pushed too soon and now I believe she will no longer bloom in my presence. Who am I to be someone a friend can't trust? Who am I to be so cruel? I can't just say, "Oh well, maybe next year. At least I didn't slice the bulb. I only broke off a stem. That's life. I'm not perfect." I can't say any of that right now. I have to say to myself that I didn't take care enough, I didn't let well enough alone. Why? Because I have not been myself? Why, because I have numbed myself with all sorts of distractions and addictions and it is time to fully admit that I am lost and must do all I can to find myself again.

I am paying the price of losing myself (in some ways literally- as in a car payment and higher insurance). My Epiphany word this year (we get one every year at church) is ALERT. I get it now. I thank the garden, I thank my friend, I thank my little yellow house, and I thank God that I didn't do more damage than I did, that I am awake now and ready to take that first humble step of renewal.