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When I stand
before thee at the day's end, thou shalt see
my scars and know that I had my wounds and also my healing.
Rabindranath Tagore
I spend all
summer carefully tending my lawns. Watering and seeding,
fertilizing, mowing, and edging. I love my yards. I have acquired
quite a collection of gardening tools and machines. I compete (in my
head) with all the gentlemen and lady gardeners who live in the
neighborhood to see who can create the plushest living carpet on the
block.
Recently we had our sprinkler system completely redone in both the
front and the back yards. My husband had convinced me that the
system I had, with which I was completely satisfied, was archaic,
worn out, and in need of replacing. Grudgingly I agreed to let the
sprinkler man renovate my system.
Sprinkler Man was going to remove my old system, pipes and all, and
replace it with a more modern construction, with sprinklers located
only in the corners of the lawn instead of interspersed throughout.
They would work in a swivel action, rotating back and forth,
watering a much larger area than the pop up variety. I was wary of
this new method, not because it wasn't a better way, but because it
was unfamiliar to me. I didn't know how to adjust the direction of
the sprinklers or the spray and due to my personality traits, I
preferred to do things in the comfortable, tired, tried and true way
I had always done.
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To do the renovations, he had to dig long trenches through my yards
wherever the old pipes were located to remove them, and even more
trenches to introduce the pipes for the new system. Walking out to
inspect his work, I was shocked. My beautiful, lush lawn looked like
a war had been fought in it.
No longer uniform, my yards were
trampled under, muddied, torn. It was a mess and I was angry. It was
too late to stop the progress that was already underway, so I had no
choice but to grit my teeth and watch all my efforts being ruined.
After the work was complete, it was my job to begin to repair the
damage. I reseeded the ugly scars of dirt patterned through the
yard, planted some flower seeds in the beds that had been unearthed,
and began my watering schedule. The lawn was dreadful, but I was
patient and waited for nature to take over and put things right.
It took some time, but slowly the grass started to come up and
little flower stalks began to emerge from the ground. Finally, I had
to admit that the new system was an improvement and that the
temporary destruction was worth it. As I look back now, the damage
had looked worse than it had actually been.
Our lives are like this. Things happen to us that aren't in line
with what we would like or expect, or tragedy strikes us so hard
that we feel irreparably scarred, unsure that we will ever recover.
Changes come marching through our lives, usually at a time when we
are ill equipped to handle them. But we do survive, with time our
scars heal, and we are ultimately made the better for it. Often, the new circumstances are far better than the old,
familiar routines. We must be willing to see past the events that
appear to ravage us, gaze towards the future to see what the outcome
can be. Do not become dispirited. Have the courage to reseed your
life and replant the flowers of you heart.
Cindy Christie is a motivational writer located in
Southern California. Scars in the Landscape is an excerpt from her
book in progress of the same title.
All rights reserved. Reproduction by permission only.
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