In an especially foul mood, as her family thumbed through a photo book, Jillian was reminded anew of the feelings, experiences, and heartache that she experienced almost exactly ten years prior. Being the quintessential Montanan, she understood that her 2010 was the year her plans, her hope, her joy was plowed under like a farmer plows his field at the end of the harvest. If she were a character in Robert’s Burn’s poem, she’d have been the mouse.
Jillian was in crisis. Spiritually, relationally, and mentally she was struggling. Jillian, feeling at her lowest, told her husband and close friend to come up with a plan for her wellbeing and she would agree to it. Whatever it was, she would say yes. After trying to manage the stormy seas of her mental health she needed more support. So, she was checked into a mental health facility in D.C for a month of intense therapy.
From the outside we can become envious of the success that people seem to have achieved, but for Jillian it did not come without significant pain and grief. Financially she found herself motivated because of the pain of not having enough as a child. Becoming emotionally healthy meant lots of therapy, because when you are at the bottom you are willing to try anything to get better.
That’s the beauty of the plowed field. Yes, it means an end to what you knew, what you grew, or nurtured, but it is also a beginning. A plowed field is ready for a new beginning.
“Plowing things under also gives you space for new things to be planted, It gives you the opportunity for this clean slate.”
2020 may feel like a year that got plowed under for many of us, but it can be the catalyst for a new beautiful harvest. What weeds need plowed to courageously prepare the field for new things to take root and grow?
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