Faith & Family
Sincere kudos to my father-in-law (who actually knows what he’s doing) for spearheading in recent years the care of any outdoor plants at our church. For several summers this was an undertaking I genuinely believed I could pull off, but—not surprisingly, considering the difference between annuals and perennials is indefinitely confusing to me—my own attempts were met with little success.
Imagine cultivating a garden and—albeit unintentionally— neglecting to regularly provide it with water. (Let’s just say that was precisely the mistake I kept making and the very reason my doomed-from-the-start Walmart Garden Center flowers never flourished in their prepared pots. Also, the deer liked snacking on them.) The following year, hydrating flowers still isn’t the foremost task on your mind and you fail in this area again. Halfway through the summer your geraniums and petunias turn brown—exactly like they did before. This pattern of planting and forgetting to water becomes little more than a perpetual, discouraging cycle, and in no time, you’ve tossed your cute gardening gloves into the dumpster and called it quits. This just isn’t my thing, you decide, brushing the dirt from your knees and determining to set your sights somewhere else.
Inevitably, repeatedly making the same mistake—like depriving plants of some basic need—will only yield the same (shriveled up, wilted) results. If you never change the way you’re doing things, how can you sincerely expect things to change?
Such an elementary truth, right? Now think about it in terms of your marriage. If you’re presently a couple stuck in that endless cycle of a few good days and a lot of bad days (if you’re in it, you know just what I mean), have you considered that changing your outlook could change the outcome?
Although I’d previously concluded that my worst enemy was surely that kid in high school who teased me for once pairing black shoes with a navy skirt (the dude literally turned to the guy behind me and hissed, “Hey, look at her outfit!”, as if he were the Ralph Lauren of Macomb High), I’ve realized it’s actually my own thoughts that tend to beat me up most.
Any time my husband chucks his sweaty socks across the living room instead of walking them to the laundry basket not ten feet away, I immediately surmise that he must not like the way my hair looks. Whenever that thing I asked him to do remains undone after 436 asks, it could only mean that he hates my guts. Should we end up dining at his favorite restaurant and not mine, well, duh—it’s because I forgot to buy bananas at the store.
For me, my perpetually imaginative brain is where communication typically breaks down, and it becomes a matter of mentally removing myself from the situation and examining it in an unbiased way. It’s when I take the time to shake up my thinking that I can see things more clearly and find comfort that my spouse’s actions probably were never about me.
If we expect a cycle to end, we must be willing to modify—or, at the very least, examine—the behaviors that perpetuate it. The outlook for my relationship with horticulture is pretty bleak. (My deepest apologies to all the plants I caused to die of thirst.) But I believe that for the couple willing to step back, reassess, and make a needed change, there is still plenty of hope.
“Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.” Matthew 19:6 A resident of McDonough County, Erin Eddy lives in Macomb with her husband, Mike, their five boys, and two zealous Australian Shepherds. She aspires to uplift readers, penning stories of encouragement and everyday life. Her work has been featured on the influential website Her View From Home, as well as the book series Chicken Soup for the Soul. Contact [email protected].
