More deadheading

I love spring in Texas. However, if it weren't for the fact that each Texas spring didn't somehow make me feel we were getting preferential treatment compared to our northern friends, I'd be dreading the quick approach of those really hot Texas summers. But for now, I, like my flowers, begin to unfold in the gentle warmth of the sun.

Spring is not only a time for new growth, new possibilities, new potential, but also a time for serious spring cleaning. I get the "urge to purge" my clutter, my junk, and sometimes my ways of thinking. This is what I think about while making my way from one plant to the other; dead-heading as I go. I enjoy this process; cleaning out the blossoms that are faded, or shriveled, or cripsy-brown and obviously dead. I think what I love most is anticipating the beauty of the plant when it regenerates itself into more blossoms, replacing what didn't flourish with what does.

So, all of this reminds me of a conversation I had with my teenage son recently. Although I am thinking flowers, he was talking relationships; and yet on this these two topics meet. We have a lot of clutter in our lives. Much of this clutter is actions things; things we should have done and didn't, or shouldn't do, and did. But some of this clutter resembles relationships in our lives. Not to reduce people to clutter, that is the farthest from my point, but let's be honest, sometimes it's relationships and personalities that aren't healthy for us, nor us for them, and these less-than-flourishing relationships could use a good deadheading so other relationships can flourish. We have a finite amount of time and space in our lives. It is unrealistic to entertain an idea that we can be friends with everyone in such a way that we help eachother grow. It take time and effort to grow anything, including relationships. If we think we can devote our time and attention to everyone equally in our lives, we need to remove those rose-tinted glasses and see life in the bright contrast of reality. Some relationships are not healthy, especially when, despite the one person trying to help, the other refuses to see the light. I see frustration played out in the lives of teenagers as well as in grown women. Sometimes we've got to know when it is time to part ways. That doesn't mean we don't care, it just means room must be made for other relationships to flourish. Sometimes a different gardner is needed to continue the pruning, and our job is to accept we are not Him.