Watering the Bathroom Plant

I got a text today that made me lol, and then think about my struggle with scrupulosity. I’m staying in an empty in-law suite and the ladies next door asked me to take care of the plants here. I’ve been watering them faithfully and praying that they don’t die.

(I have a history with plants…including once when I left my whole air-purifying collection to drain on the porch after I watered them… in mid- winter. Their poor green leaves blackened, and the ice around their pot bases only solidified the definiteness of their deadened state...in short, they froze to death in half an hour.)

Anyway, I was worried about one plant in the bathroom of this suite. It seemed the leaves were curling up and I wondered if the shower steam had gotten to it (you’d think others’ showers before my time here might have equally affected it, but I thought for sure that its seeming sickness was my fault).

So I texted the ladies, “I just don’t know how to properly love that plant.”

I had worried that I was doing something wrong, my mind afloat with so many other stresses like the real question of how to love others and myself in this life, that I might actually have had a delusion regarding the plant…

My worries were relieved by text this morning: “The plant looks fine, terrific in fact. Never looked better.” 

“Wow," I thought…"and here I was thinking I was killing that plant. Maybe I have a green thumb after all…”

My neighbor made a few other comments about apartment appliances and then wrote, “P.S. The plant is artificial. Happy Monday.”

Ha!

What else am I watering that’s artificial? The thought that everything has to be perfect (according to my flawed standards) in order for me to enjoy life? Instead, let me wonder something new...like how did that plastic plant soak up all that water?