She had lots of books and plants to move (the close-dropping apple sometimes falls between two trees).
On the 18th of August I posted that I had experienced a vegetal born-again experience and had become “the plant man”. As you can see from the one photo, I have grown in this new identity and can now carry even the heaviest of plants with Zen joy and calm. Even my wife, THE plant lady, can’t resist laying hands on me to try capture some of my plant mojo.
…STOP!!!…
…who am i trying to kid it’s all a farce i’m no plant man i haven’t learned the name of a single plant and they remain off my radar I didn’t even know there was a garden day let alone that it was last sunday I’m not prejudiced against plants I’m even friends with people who are friends with plants I’m the book and ideas man for heaven’s sake there are only so many hours in a day I can’t carry out this charade any longer I don’t give a fig about plants please don’t hate me!!!!!
…..WOW…I FEEL SO MUCH LIGHTER!
Anyway, as I was saying, we helped our daughter move.
There was something poignant in the fact that she was born and lived her first years in the city bowl with that spectacular mountain view and has returned there as a twenty-something year old.
With every fibre I wish her blessing and prosperity as she takes these difficult adulting steps and makes her way.
The psychologist Larry Crabb said something to the effect that having children is like having your own heart walking around, vulnerable, outside the protection of your rib cage. How true that is.
To have children is to choose to be wounded; that part of you (literally formed, in part, from your DNA), absent and leaving a gap. Unhealthy parents try to plug that wound by not letting go; it merely festers. We cannot resist God’s ways and must submit to the ecstatic wound that He knows so well.
I’ve always imagined the parenting process as a highway extending ahead of both parent and child. We birth them forward and they are forever in our horizon. We, however, are behind them and it’s not their job to have us in their horizon (aged caregiving responsibility not being what I’m talking about here).
If they occasionally pause and freely turn to give us thanks and honour, then we are blessed and so will they be (Deuteronomy 5:16).
