Bloom like an amaryllis

My wife, Lori, and I are not good with houseplants. When she brings home a new plant, I shake my head, knowing the plant’s likely demise. I want to pull it aside and whisper, “I’m so sorry she bought you. I promise I’ll pray for you.”

If plants could muster a police force, they would charge Lori and me with negligent homicide.

So last year, when some well meaning friends gave us an amaryllis for Christmas, I thanked them kindly.

And as soon as they left, I knelt by their gift and offered last rites for it.

Much to my surprise, Lori faithfully watered and cared for the amaryllis. And even more to my surprise, in due time, it blossomed bright red bulbs, a true wonder of nature.

And then we placed it in the garage.

I forgot about it.

Days turned into weeks.

Then, it happened. One day as I was carrying my laptop and books into the house for some evening work, the amaryllis shocked me. I well nigh dropped my armful of work.

That plant had blossomed.

“How did that happen?” I asked myself.

No water; an inconspicuous corner of the garage; no Miracle Grow. But there they were: scarlet red bulbs, grinning at me as if to say, “You can’t keep me down. If you don’t take care of me, I’ll show you and blossom anyway.”

“This amaryllis is the perfect companion to Houseplants for Dummies,” I told Lori.

It had bloomed in an unlikely place.

My amaryllis reminds me of people I know who have been cast into the dark corners of life’s garages and blossomed anyway.

Like Thelma, who is almost 90 years old. She’s been blooming for years, long before I met her. I carefully observed her week after week as she dutifully cared for her husband in the long-term care facility where he spent the last years of his life. Always wearing a smile, she wanted to know about my day and how I was doing.

After her husband’s death, she managed quite well living home alone, until she took a hard fall. Then she was in the same long-term care facility where she had once cared for her husband. Every time I visited her, the same smile was there. “Tell me how you are doing?” she would cheerily ask.

I knew she was in pain.

“How do you keep such a positive attitude?” I asked her.

“You just have to keep on going, doing the best you can, since you can’t determine what happens to you.”

Then down the hall, there’s Mary June, stricken at the age of 49 with a mysterious disease that still has doctors scratching their heads. Confined to her bed, unable to see, she answers my question the same way each week.

“How are you today?”

“Great! I’m doing great.” And she is sincere, though I know she has her moments of doubt and confusion.

I leave humbled, for I am the one who seems to get ministered to when I visit.

There are many such amaryllises in different places. They aren’t hard to find: They stand out amidst the weeds of life, looking beyond themselves to brighten the lives of others, finding the best in whatever circumstance life has dealt them.

They are the ones who choose how they are going to respond to the ugliness of life or simply to the neglect of people who don’t know better. They refuse to let circumstances determine their destiny. They are thermostats, setting their own frame of mind, rather then thermometers, merely reflecting the attitudes and actions of those around them.

Victor Frankl, the neurologist, psychiatrist, and holocaust survivor, wondered why some victims of the concentration camps fought through as best they could while others simply gave up.  He chronicled his experience in the concentration camp in his book, Man’s Search for Meaning. The key to finding meaning in even the most brutal forms of existence might be summarized in his statement: “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of human freedoms - to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.”

People can choose to bloom where they are planted. Or they can choose to whither and die.

I tenderly move my amaryllis to a brighter spot and thank it for its blossoms.