Gardens and Friendships and Really Long Metaphors

I used to really have fun with analogies and expounding on a
metaphor. Due to my high level of enjoyment of nature, and using nature
for examples, and due to the fact that nature can be icky, for awhile
some friends called me “slightly gross analogy girl.” I was okay with
it. So I’m going to metaphorize here in this little web space that
rarely gets tended to anymore.

Lately I’ve been
thinking on friendship. It seems that even when a woman is well out of
high school, friendships can still feel rather, well, “high school”.
Perhaps not the friendships themselves lack maturity, but the concern
over them and drama around them do. At the root of it oftentimes is our
own insecurity, our desire to be genuinely liked and our fear of being
left out. Over the past year as I’ve taken a step back in a few areas of
life, I’ve found that I’m okay letting the chords and strings that hold
me to others stretch a bit longer than I’d normally be comfortable
with. I’ve learned to trust that when a friend says she loves me, she
really does love me and I don’t have to have a current stream of texts
of my phone to substantiate it.

So… on with the
metaphor. Maintaining and growing friendships is much like tending to a
garden. (Wait, is that a simile? I used “like”…)

Maybe
most importantly, we each have to understand the amount of space we can
physically maintain. In previous summers, I started a garden in raised
beds or a prepared plot and then dug up more and more spots in the yard
to stick in plants only to discover that I lacked the capacity to grow
them all. I was so eager for variety, to taste a little bit of
everything, and I wanted to grow things sometimes simply for the reason
that someone else was growing it in their garden. It turns out I hardly
got to taste anything at all. The weeds overtook the corn, the okra was
piddly, and the lettuce was shaded out by the ten varieties of tomatoes
I’d planted. I had no boundaries, and the lack of boundaries left me
overwhelmed. I now have a fence around my garden, and when I run out of
room, I stop planting. Likewise, we have to know how many and what kind
of relationships we can devote our attention to. We can’t be friends
with everyone. And if we choose to plant something new, we have to make
sure our soil is fertile and healthy. There are seasons when we have to
let our soil rest as well.

Each relationship is
different, of course, just like the plants in the garden. Each plant has
its own nutrient, water and sunlight demands. It might still grow while
deprived of any one of these, but it won’t be fruitful. Also, when
given too much attention, many plants suffer. How many times have I made
my presence too well known, tried to will plants into production, known
they were diseased and yet stubbornly left them to rot to the stem,
wasting precious garden soil and time? How many tomato plants have I
over-watered and suffocated? There are tomato plants I’ve also
under-watered, the fruit has still grown but then cracked open and
molded after a good rain.

Sometimes, we have to admit
that growing three massive red hibiscus
bushes isn’t our style, and we don’t even like herbal tea to begin
with. We admit that although we want to be salad growers, the lettuce
always comes up bitter and bolts too quickly. In friends, we see that
though we long to be invited to ladies’ nights where we get to put our
best faces on and maybe even pair the tall boots with the denim dress,
we really would rather split a bottle of wine on the couch in our
pajamas with a shoddy rom-com playing in the background that was the
ruse to get our friend to come over. And when that’s the fruit we grow
and tend to, we can’t be disappointed that we didn’t end up at the table
of fourteen at Maggiano’s.

Just like plants, we have
to know our friends individually and know when we are needed and when
time needs to pass between watering. We can’t place our desire to tinker
above their God-given need to rest. We need the friends with deep roots
and hardy stems that come back year after year, can weather the frost
and the heat and even our over-eager watering and still bring beautiful
fragrance to our lives. There are plants (and friendships) that it would
seem I’ve tried to kill by neglect, and yet they survive. We also need
the friends that just come into our lives for a short time, for that
quick burst of beauty while sharing with us for a season. Some plants
grow just to mend weary soil. Sometimes the only way to save a plant
from its untimely death is a painful heart-to-heart with a solid pair of
pruning shears.

I’m sure by now I’ve beat it into the
ground (metaphor extended), but one final note is that our neighbor’s
gardens will always look more abundant and lovely from our side of the
fence. Know that any good garden takes a lifetime to grow. We will fail
over and over, and we will mourn the loss of those we cherished. But as
the seasons come and go, and our thumbs begin to green, we find that
there is nothing more rewarding than the tending to and actually getting
to taste what’s there.