I came across this underneath a pile of rubble while cleaning out my she-shed this past spring.
I found what I presumed to be part of a dead plant after pulling out the cracked plastic mini planter boxes and some wrappers from gardening supplies. I thought it was trash until I looked closer and realized that this was part of an aloe vera plant. This so-called plant’s root was dried up, but its fleshy stem was still green and supple. It clung to life from under trash and without a speck of soil to nourish it. My guess is that it lived there, minimum a year but most likely longer because that’s how long we have lived in our house.
I planted it in some fresh soil in one of the terra cotta pots that had been left by the previous owner to see if it would thrive. I mean, what did I have to lose? It had already (sort of) survived this long without soil, sunlight, or water.
A few months later, wouldn’t you know…not only was it thriving, but it was sprouting new offsets.
I could have easily disregarded this half-dead plant, believing it was useless and going to die anyway. But, I wanted to give it a chance. It turns out, a little replanting and nurturing is all it needed.
Before you debunk this by telling me these plants are hard to kill, I did some research on the aloe vera plant. They are succulents, holding water for long periods of time to survive…but only for a while. They can live in shade, but they require water and sunlight to continue growing or they will eventually die. They can be used for medicinal purposes as well. If you break off one of the leaves it contains a gel that can be put on the skin to treat minor burns.
Call me simple minded, but I can’t help but see the correlation to this plant with our own lives, especially now in this unpredictable, stress-filled time we live in.
We are the plant, buried under stress, exhaustion, bills, anxiety, illness, guilt, shame, loneliness, or whatever the trial may be.
We can call on God to lift us up from under all the garbage, or whatever is weighing us down, and replant us and care for us. If we are still here, living and breathing, we still have purpose.
Our healing may take time, but when God replants us, we become revived so that we become who He designed us to be.
And like the aloe vera, we can grow and be used to help others.
Hold on to faith.
God bless,
Lisa
