Violets and Me: or What God Taught Me Through a Little Plant

Warning this is a US Southern style narrative with a Christian viewpoint, I will eventually get to the point but you need the context first.?

Violets and I have a long history.?My first violet was given to me when I was 12 yrs old by my grandmother (a violet whisperer) that she had started after I was born and kept alive all that time.?I promptly killed it. Not on purpose! I overwatered it.?For the next 30 years my grandmother would regularly give me violets that she had started and I could not maintain them or keep them alive.?I overwatered, underwatered, let them get too cold, overfertilized or under fertilized, didn’t give them light or gave them too much light, etc. I continued to buy African Violets in various colors regularly in memory of my grandmother after she passed away and I continued to kill them.

Last year my kind friend of many years heard about my struggle and revealed that she too was a violet whisperer and that she would help me.?And help me she did!! to the point that I had almost 50 baby violet plants thriving under my plant lights.?After giving most of them away I still had a few that had overbudded at the root, meaning that 3-4 suckers/pups melded together with the main crown and the plants needed to be separated.

So that is the background…in summary I have a “seedy” history with African violets and two weeks ago after successfully propagating some lovely plants I had several that needed to be separated.

Oh, and a bit more background, I talk to God sometimes…. conversationally with pauses, and very occasionally… every now and then… I will get an insight or thought in the midst of my soliloquy that I don’t believe came from me.

So, question for you…have you ever had an Earth Shattering, dream killing, soul wrenching, heart-breaking event in your life??I have had a couple and one in the last few months.?I believe in God and Jesus has always been the rock of my salvation, so my Faith was not shaken but inevitably crisis tends to strip us to the bone and leave us asking why God? Why me? Why now? How could this happen? What do you expect me to learn from this??And this stuff still hurts and sometimes leaves scars, both visible and invisible….OK back to my story…

I pulled out my bucket of loam to repot the separated plants and over my huge kitchen sink I started to rip apart (very gently of course) my violets.?I had about 10 large plants and the process was messy and violent.?At a couple of points, I had to get a very sharp knife and sterilize it and gently conduct surgery to prevent damaging the “mother” plant.??In the end I was left with dirty hands, a dirty sink, dirt on the floor, piles of separated leaves and 30 smaller plants that looked wilted and unhappy in their new little pots.

So, as I ripped up these little plants and cried out to God, I had the thoughts “this is for your own good”, “this will let you thrive”, “this will make a brand-new plant (when I broke a leaf I did not mean to)” and I was crying and talking to God about my situation and I heard, “sometimes I have to rip you apart in order for you to grow....”?I stopped and started to reflect:

Think about it: growing is never easy. True growth.?Growth where you have to reach for something you have never touched before. Growth where you have to open yourself to the sunlight (new thoughts or information), spread down roots into the soil (solidify relationships and draw in encouragement). Sometimes you get dirty or hurt in the process because humans aren’t perfect and we don’t always say or do the right thing at exactly the right moments.

When we get torn apart: physically or psychologically there are two options----you can choose to live or choose to die.

Option 1: life. You can choose to heal and grow.?

• It hurts: don't get in a knife fight without expecting to get sliced. Healing and growing are painful. In my 55 years I have never once experienced either physical or psychological healing or growth without pain, without feeling uncomfortable, without realizing I too am human and make mistakes.?
• It takes honesty. You have to be honest with yourself and others to let true healing take place.
• It takes energy.?You have to take care of yourself so that you can be there for others. Sometimes this means resting, reflecting, pausing things that you thought were important and prioritizing what is truly crucial to healing and life.?
• It means getting help from others and LETTING others help you (this is the hardest part for me because I want to be the one fixing up others not letting someone give me a hand). Sometimes it means asking for help (for most of us this is hard to do). God did not put us here on Earth alone and He wants us to share our burdens and help each other (Galatians 6:2)
• It takes action.?You cannot sit still and wait for others to meet all of your needs, only God can do that.? Make a plan, make goals and put one foot in front of the other. Greet every day with a smile and a prayer, wash your face and move out.

Option 2: death.?You don’t have to die physically to be dead in this world, you can shut yourself off and sit in the dark or live vicariously through television, online or others’ lives. You can make choices that ensure you will never get hurt again, but in doing so you will never grow again either.?Remember the context:?I am an expert at killing violets….African violets die in the dark, they die when no-one interacts with them, they die without nutrients and water, I have even had them die by being left in the same place for too long, they die when left alone with suckers growing off of them literally sucking out their life….How are we any different?

I stopped crying and “whining” to God after my reflection.?I cleaned my hands; I cleaned the sink and floor.?I put the new plants in a good place, I put the leaves and cuttings in water to root them and put them near a window.?The 30 baby plants are starting to thrive in their new pots and putting out new growth. The leaves I set up to root have grown small roots and some even bloomed!

So here is the point of my story:?I firmly believe God loves us enough that he sometimes has to “separate” us from the suckers of our lives: the bad habits, the bad directions, the bad influences, the co-dependent relationships.?Sometimes he “exposes our roots”: exposes truths we want to keep hidden or not face, cuts us to the bare minimum so we can trust in Him even more. He will then place our roots in good soil or help us grow new ones, improve our relationship with Him. In following Him, we can enhance our relationships with those we love and care about.?It means taking a risk and stepping out in Faith. We will risk hurt but how much greater is the joy of accomplishing something new or making a new friend after we have felt the hurt of rejection.

And finally:?Every single human being is experiencing or has experienced an Earth Shattering, dream killing, soul wrenching, heart-breaking event. Know and embrace that you are not alone.?Sometimes these happen through no fault of your own and sometimes they happen because we made an unwise choice.?Every scratch and scar we gain in our journey are marks of courage and bravery and represent our choice to take on Option 1 (James 1).??