Gardens

Dear Girls,

There are different seasons to this life.

Some will have problem upon problem, heartache upon heartache, simply heaped upon you until you can hardly bear it. Yet, still more hardship will come. I hope you remember to remind yourself that even though it feels that way– you are actually in the middle of bearing it. You are doing the thing that feels like it can’t be done.

This year, across the globe, life is heaping unbearable things upon us again and again. This is your gentle reminder that even though this is happening and it is frightening, painful, and exhausting– we’re still here today. However things go, my dear daughters, we are still here. Living in spite of the weight.

I can promise, with certainty, a few things in the season of unrelenting pain:

1. At some point there will be joy again. Even in the middle of the despair, you might find something beautiful, an undeserved laugh, hug, or encouragement.
2. You don’t have to bear it alone. If you look there is someone who will walk beside you through it.
3. There is someone who has done this before you. It will be a hard thing to see clearly in the midst of it, but there are footsteps to follow when you are unsure of which direction to go.

Often you need to remind yourself of these things, but if you forget, life usually will take you to these truths all on its own.

All of your cumulative days will be filled with many different variations, lessons, and changes. Friends might ebb and flow. Money will ebb and flow. Your happiness and sorrow will ebb and flow. Yet, one constant, one thing that always will happen is that there will be a break to all things. Happiness will give way to something sad. Failure will be a building block to a future success. Laughter and tears and blandness all intermingle through your time here on earth. Knowing this, means that there will always come a moment where you face something different than before. Your life will have seasons.

As such, this means you constantly are given an opportunity to decide how you are going to muddle through that next season. It is the the thing your mother believes that all faith, all life affirming actions, all tenants are based on. As you move through life, your story will be based on how you answered when presented with this problem of: “What do you do when you have a choice?” Having that story be one you feel pride in retelling seems to be the ultimate work we were put here to do.

Let me see if I can explain it better. You can feel all the things, my dear girls, in the confusion of a moment in your life. However, at some point, your emotions are just fuel for a choice. It is your actions that will matter more than how you felt and what you said in life. Your life will be built on “What did you choose?”

I can almost guarantee you’ll work that out many different ways. You will decide to do nothing, the wrong thing, or the thing that feels so Godly right. You will repeat this your entire worldly existence until you take your last breath on earth. This is being human.

Now, after you process that, I hope you start to see that almost everything is actually a choice. All the time. In the smallest and biggest ways.

The wonderful thing about it all is this: There is always another chance to chase doing that wonderful, right feeling thing. Even if you made choices that feel so deeply wrong for you, that you hadn’t realized would cause pain to other people, and that lead you down a path you don’t care for. These choices that left you less than whole are simply seeds. All the absolute horrible, painful, grief-numbing moments are the ones that offer the most miraculous grace of learning about what makes your thread yours as it weaves through into the greater work of human existence.

There is always a choice and another chance: You can apologize. You can do better. You can listen. You can do it differently next time. You can be truer to yourself. You can start with one small right thing and let it build your momentum.

In your life this will be repeated again and again and again. You get to choose what you want to grow with these seeds that line your path of memories and your future self.

So, girls, I ask you: Will you grow more pain? More sorrow? Or will it be fodder for something else? Will you leave behind something beautiful for those who are going to follow behind you? Will you take the opportunity to make something out of tragedy and your pain– even though you know it will find you again? You can grow something beautiful out of the good and bad parts of your life. Each choice and subsequent choice is your life’s garden.

For my own self, you girls are my garden from all my past mistakes. You are what grows in the missteps I make figuring out how to be mother in a messy world. So if you think there is nothing to grow or your mistakes are losses to be cut– stop running. Stay. Watch what comes up from the ashes once your done burning. In my life it was you all. I have never been so happy to be have lost everything. I spend many of my days petrified for you, the world I brought you into, at how we treat one another, but I have faith that fear is a friend in the end. I can do lots of things afraid. I can know that in all the times my life is wrecked that it is an opportunity to make something stronger, wiser, better, and braver if I just stick around to do the work.

Each season of your life will pass. It will yield seeds to plant. You can grow more pain or you can grow healing. You will repeat this all your life. You will forever be practicing how to choose things that feel make you feel whole. This is being human.

Tend to the garden of your life girl with care and a little wildness as well.

I love you. I love you each so much. And I will love you through all your life’s seasons.

Love, Mom