What’s Choking Me

When my mother died in March 2000, she was at the beginning of her 4th term as the mayor of my hometown.  As you may imagine, we had tons and tons of flowers sent to the funeral home. (The funny thing about that was how my mother actually felt about flowers for the dead.  What’s the point?)

In any case, we also received several plants, 2 of which I brought home.  Both were sent from dear friends in Florida and were actually warm weather plants.  Their survival in the midwest, much less in my home, were far from guaranteed.

One plant lasted about 3 years before it died, but the other, is still with me.  A few months after I left my corporate job, I walked passed her and heard, “Astrid”.  I looked around and no one else was in the room.  I remembered that I had been wanting to give the plant a name since it had survived over 5 years with me.  Now, I guess I had it.

“Astrid” talks to me.  She tells me when she needs water or needs to be moved.  She has survived 4 moves, one move was strapped in the back seat of our jeep as we moved in, then out of NYC.  Astrid has become part of the family.

This last move has been challenging for her.  Her branches spread out quite a bit and all the doors in this house are narrow.  She lost several branches when we moved in, not to mention the trama of a move in January.   I was so worried about her that I moved her into my small office,  hoping that love would heal her.

Spring came and we got ants. (Please don’t get me started on all the reasons I hate this house!).  The ants got onto Astrid and since they were coming in thru a hole in the windowsill, I thought moving her would be the best.

After a few weeks in the new location upstairs, there were no more ants.  As the weeks progressed, however, Astrid never seemed to change.  No new leaves were sprouting and the one that did turned black before it unfurled.

It was like she was in limbo–she was not dying, but she wasn’t thriving, either.

Finally, one morning about a month ago, I went to check on her.  I could tell she was hurting.  I asked,“what do you need?” “Water-3 bottles, please.”  So, I filled up those 3 bottles and dumped them in.  “3 more, please”.  So I did.

I thought it would be enough, but then I heard, “2 more.”  I thought it was crazy. But I knew I had to follow through.

After I began pouring the final 2 bottles, I was not prepared for what happened next.

Water began pouring out of the bottom of the container like a sink overflowing.  As I turned to run out of the room for a towel, I saw hundreds and hundreds of ants crawling out of the other side of the container.  So many, that I couldn’t even tell the color of the container.  I was horrified.

Needless to say, I had to destroy the ants and then clean up the 1000s of bodies lying around the container.  I got so creeped out by the sight, I had to take a couple of Benadryls to calm my nerves.  I had the heebie-jeebies for 2 days.

Astrid, however, breathed a sigh of relief.  I went out of town for a week and came home to 5 new sprouts and more color than I seen in months.  She was, again, thriving.

I share this story for 2 reasons:

1) Sometimes you are going to be asked by your wisdom to do something that doesn’t make sense.  Pouring more water into my plant seemed pointless.  But there was a bigger reason to do so.  Had I known ahead of time that I would have to deal with 1000s of ants, I may have let her die.  Trust that you are being directed for something good.  Always.

2) I have learned on this journey, that many things that happen to us are metaphors.  Nothing is random.  While I believe that sometimes a book, is a just a book, I think that those things that rattle us in some way, whether it’s creepy ants or a bad day in the office, have a deeper message.  We simply need to ask, “what am I meant to glean from this?”

For me, I have discovered that I needed to take a look at what’s choking my root system.  While I may no longer feel that I am dying, I am a long way from thriving.  I’ve been in limbo for months and just like the flood that Astrid asked for, I need to flood my system with the light of inquiry.

I’ve uncovered some interesting stuff so far.  I’ll keep you posted.

So what’s choking you?