Are You Watering Your Garden?
Are you watering your garden?
This may seem like a weird question to ask less than two weeks before the next major holiday.
It’s November and holiday fever, or fervor, is in the air. Some people are already tackling Christmas and holiday shopping, discussing menu ideas, and considering how they will spend their holidays, with who, where, and most of all how will it make them feel?
Holidays also means the possibility of hearing from people you probably haven’t heard from in a while. Yes, this includes family.
So, when I ask, “Are you watering your garden?” what I am really asking is, how are you nurturing your relationships?
Which flower or plant represents your friendships and relationships. Is it a tree? Long-standing overtime. Or is it a perennial flower that springs back resiliently every season. Or, is it an annual plant? Good for a time but has to be renewed and replanted every season.
Around this time of year, I think it is time that we take inventory. Have I stopped watering the flowers and plants in my garden? Have I stopped attending to my relationships in the same way? What has changed? Do I want it to change back to how it was before?
Do you have a person in mind at this point?
Gardening and tending to relationships is hard work. Personally and professionally, relationship repair is always on my mind. I help people bridge reconnection and find each other again. It is difficult yet rewarding work. I think it is hard for people to say they stopped investing in a friendship or relationship. For some people, they felt they had to because the relationship was no longer serving them or in alignment. Another reality is some people get tired of feeling like they are the only one fighting for the well-being and survival of the relationship.
Have you ever bought a plant you REALLY wanted? You imagined how it will go, asked for care instructions, and maybe even thought of where you will keep it in your home or garden. Then maybe a few days to weeks later, the plant is not doing too well and may eventually die. The same can be said of relationships (any connection of two or more people not limited to romance) if the work is not done to properly care for it.
I don’t know who needs to hear this, but relationships require heavy lifting at times. Difficult conversations, radical honesty, reflection, vulnerability and so much more. In the dating realm I often hear people are looking for “someone and something real.” We should apply some of these similar requirements to friend and family relationships.
How can you see if you are nurturing your garden and the important relationships in your life? Consider these following points:
Reality- What has changed about the reality/current state of the relationship?
Circumstances- What prompted change? Precipitating events including dynamics, seasons of change, and timing
Permanency- Is this for a season or possibly forever?
Hopefulness- Is there true potential for change, renewal of connection
Use this start of the holiday season to check in with yourself and those connected to you. This time has potential for genuine reconnection and also for serious reflection.
I’d love to hear your thoughts, drop me a comment.
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