How Does Your Garden Grow?

Okay, I have an admission:  this post really isn't about gardens....shhhhh!

But since it's in the title, I'll start there. How DOES  your garden grow?

Well, I suspect it grows what you plant in it. I imagine it blooms best when fertilized with good stuff.  I'm pretty sure it doesn't bear well when it's neglected. I think you get out of it exactly what you put into it.

Kind of like in life. If your life was a garden, how would it grow? Would it grow ugliness and meanness, or would it grow grace and beauty?

Lately, I've been noticing how mean people can be. Facebook is full of ugliness, and, in real life, almost every day I get "put in my place" by customers at work.  Yesterday alone, I was explicitly told in an email from a customer that I had "NO idea" what I was doing, and later in the day, a realtor chewed me out and compared my company to "fly-by-night" companies that cheat people. All this in an effort to coerce and manipulate me to do something they wanted me to do:  most of the time, to get a loan approved without meeting the established guideline. (If only I possessed the power people think I have!) It seems acceptable now that people can say anything or make any accusation without regard to truth, as long as it gets them what they want.

I try to give grace and imagine what other unrelated things might be happening in people's lives to make them so mean and ugly to each other (and to me!). Sometimes that's the only way I can get through the wickedness the world throws at me every day. But at some point, we just have to take responsibility for how our own garden is growing.

So someone said something mean to you. So you are having a bad day. So you are in pain today. So you are depressed and sad right now. So your kids are tearing the house up and you don't have the energy to stop them. So you didn't sleep well last night, and now you have to face a hard day at work on little to no rest.

So what.

Are you really going to use that as an excuse? Make no mistake, you have a choice. You CAN control your own behavior. The only justification for meanness is because you chose it, and decided to become one of "those people." Meanness doesn't just happen -- it's tended to and grown. Deliberately.

So, here's the choice we all get every day when something unpleasant comes our way:

1.  You can whine about it and let the poison spread....feed the weeds in your garden.

Or...

2.  You can use your rough day as fertilizer to make you better and help you bloom. (You do know what fertilizer is made of, right? Nothing pleasant, I assure you!)

How does your garden grow? It grows exactly the way you trained it to grow. You are the gardener, and you will be judged by your fruits. If you neglect your garden, it will show.

Let's go tend our gardens today. I want mine to have a sweet look about it. I want the fruit to be good, in spite of what other gardeners might throw over my fence. I can control my reactions. So can we all.

Let's start taking responsibility for our words.