Fast Day 8...My internal garden

Yesterday I went to therapy, and I had the "breakthrough" moment my therapist was looking for.  She had evidence that my inner belief system had changed.  For a while I was still requiring validation from other people to know that I was okay, that the changes I had made in my life were acceptable, that I had in fact made changes in my life.

I had needed to have someone else notice and let me know that they had noticed, because in a lot of ways, my world hasn't changed.  I still have the same job, I live in the same place, I look the same.  Not much of my surroundings have changed, but I have changed.

I had to do an inner garden exercise for one of my classes.  Several things happened when I went to look at my inner garden.  The first is that I noticed that my garden filled with flowers of all kinds, but there are spaces.  Empty areas where the weeds have been removed and new seeds have yet to be planted.

That's huge because I have had a bad habit of allowing the weeds to take over.  I have let self-doubt control me and my activities.  I didn't weed my garden because sometimes weeds are kind of pretty.  And well...weeds are hard to remove.  It takes a lot of work to get rid of a weed completely.  Weeds are remarkably hard to kill.  And sometimes, removing a weed, can mean digging up a flower or two in the process.

My garden was in full bloom too, which means that it was being well maintained.  I am taking the time to dead-head the flowers.  I am watering and fertilizing the soil.  Both work, but also worth the beauty of the garden.

But the master gardener didn't want to spend a lot of time looking at the garden I had.  He wanted to show me something else.

We walked to the edge of my garden, the white picket fence I had put up and he said, "Do you see the edge of the field over there?"

I looked at the vast expanse of meadow that stretched all around my garden and I told him that I couldn't see an edge.  It was field everywhere, as far as my eyes could see.  He said, "That is still what you have left to cultivate."

Apparently I still have a long way to go before my garden is anywhere near complete.  However, I know that I can grow a beautiful one.