Scars
in the Landscape
By
When
I stand before thee at the day’s end, thou shalt see my scars and know that I
had my wounds and also my healing.
I spend all summer carefully tending my lawns. Watering and seeding,
fertilizing, mowing, and edging. I love my yards. I have acquired quite a
collection of gardening tools and machines. I compete (in my head) with all the
gentlemen and lady gardeners who live in the neighborhood to see who can create
the plushest living carpet on the block.
Recently we had our
sprinkler system completely redone in both the front and the back yards. My
husband had convinced me that the system I had, with which I was completely
satisfied, was archaic, worn out, and in need of replacing. Grudgingly I agreed
to let the sprinkler man renovate my system.
Sprinkler Man was
going to remove my old system, pipes and all, and replace it with a more modern
construction, with sprinklers located only in the corners of the lawn instead of
interspersed throughout. They would work in a swivel action, rotating back and
forth, watering a much larger area than the pop up variety. I was wary of this
new method, not because it wasn’t a better way, but because it was unfamiliar
to me. I didn’t know how to adjust the direction of the sprinklers or the
spray and due to my personality traits, I preferred to do things in the
comfortable, tired, tried and true way I had always done.
To do the
renovations, he had to dig long trenches through my yards wherever the old pipes
were located to remove them, and even more trenches to introduce the pipes for
the new system. Walking out to inspect his work, I was shocked. My beautiful,
lush lawn looked like a war had been fought in it. No longer uniform, my yards
were trampled under, muddied, torn. It was a mess and I was angry. It was too
late to stop the progress that was already underway, so I had no choice but to
grit my teeth and watch all my efforts being ruined.
After the work was
complete, it was my job to begin to repair the damage. I reseeded the ugly scars
of dirt patterned through the yard, planted some flower seeds in the beds that
had been unearthed, and began my watering schedule. The lawn was dreadful, but I
was patient and waited for nature to take over and put things right. It took
some time, but slowly the grass started to come up and little flower stalks
began to emerge from the ground. Finally, I had to admit that the new system was
an improvement and that the temporary destruction was worth it. As I look back
now, the damage had looked worse than it had actually been.
Our lives are like this. Things happen to us that aren’t in line with what we would like or expect, or tragedy strikes us so hard that we feel irreparably scarred, unsure that we will ever recover. Changes come marching through our lives, usually at a time when we are ill equipped to handle them. But we do survive, with time our scars heal, and we are ultimately made the better for it. Oftentimes, the new circumstances are far better than the old, familiar routines. We must be willing to see past the events that appear to ravage us, gaze towards the future to see what the outcome can be. Do not become dispirited. Have the courage to reseed your life and replant the flowers of you heart.