excuse me mrs. busybody

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it's january. and you know what that means.

nope, not resolutions. or gym memberships. or black eyed peas and collard greens.

something far more exciting and potentially debilitating than that.

a fresh, new desk calendar. with beautiful little blank boxes and 52 free weeks. black font on white stock paper. nothing fancy.

but oh how my heart swells when they are delivered around the office. in fact, i've been hoarding mine in my desk for a few months. peeking at it every now and then, itching to mark it up.

you see, i'm a planner. well, not so much a planner but a look-forward-to-er. nothing thrills me more than seeing a month filled with red ink, black smiley faces scribbled on weekend margins, and pictures representing events (i sometimes draw a legend in the bottom right corner to aid with decrypting.)

so yesterday morning i pulled it out of hiding, ripped off the unnecessary cover page, and started at january. blankly. with not one event entering my mind. at first, i was stricken with panic. what? no plans? no trips or weekend getaways or heck, deadlines?

then i breathed a sweet, soft sigh, just loud enough to lift the edge of january and reveal the bottom corner of february. because for now, for this brief second, my life is free. next month will see a trip to the coast, a dinnerboat cruise, and a trip to medieval times.

but not january. this blessed month holds no such surprises. yet.

give it a few weeks (or minutes), and i'm sure i can find something to fill the spaces. little happenings to decorate my days. to anticipate. expect. await.

but for now, january sits naked.

and i sit content.

my best laid plans slipped right through my hands

this is a post about good intentions thwarted. about how sometimes, no matter how methodical and planned are the events that shape our lives, chaos can sneak in. disappointment and heartache can rear their ugly heads. but sometimes--just sometimes--our plans can change for the better, opening us up to new ideas and experiences that our carefully-penciled-in-life might have missed.

i bought my pansies on veteran's day.

on that cool november afternoon, i packed pablo in the car and took myself to wal-mart, perusing the greenhouse-guarded plants with care. i wanted a hearty, strong flower, one that was accustomed to, and thrived in, the cold. i remembered mama telling me that pansies were one of the only flowers that could withstand cold temperatures. i thought to myself, hmm. that's a bit ironic, given their name.

so i picked out the largest bucket of pansies available, being sure to select the one that still had many unopened buds, so i could watch it bloom. when i got home, i divided the bucket into two little pots to hang from the lamp post outside our cottage. and i loved them.

call me crazy, but i get so much enjoyment out of taking care of flowers. i think it stems from my nurturing side, but every morning, i would get up and drag my sleepy self into the cold of the sunrise. watering pail in hand, i would gently soak their soil, excited about seeing their little blooms perked up in the daylight when i got home from work. and they always were.

but yesterday morning, my good intentions were the cause of a very bad situation. like any other morning, i watered the flowers, then headed off to work.

i came home excited as usual, certain the buds would be stretched toward the sun. but they were not.

they were hanging down, dried and shriveled. i ran out of my car and pressed my fingertip to the soil. hard as a brick. how could this have happened? i wondered. i watered them just this morning.

then i looked down. the water had turned to ice and had essentially frozen the roots of the flowers. it had all but killed them.

i quickly took the flowers off the post and brought them into my warm cottage. oil heat is expensive, but there's nothing quite like flushed wooden floorboards on chilly feet.

i placed them in front of my fireplace and let them thaw overnight. i wish i could tell you that this morning, they were back to normal and perky as ever. but they weren't. they're getting there. the heaviest buds are still drooped over, but the smaller ones have returned to their upright positions and have started opening up again. the ice melted and served as water for them.

sometimes you can't plan life. God taught me this in the form of little butter yellow and black pansies. sometimes it hands you a curveball and it's all you can do to keep your head above water. sometimes what we think is best for our life can choke it--or worse, freeze it in place.

so i'm learning. to be open to change, even though it's probably the one thing i hate more than anything else in this world. to let the natural ebb and flow of my days be a bit more sporatic. and to give it time. to let the ice that sometimes hardens over my life melt. and give way to nourishing water. time heals. people change. and life is unpredictable.

perhaps that's why it's also so gosh-darn beautiful.