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When Life Hands You Lemons 1: Move to Lakeland

megHan

A lot has changed since I last wrote here, so much that I don’t even know where to start… and one post will simply not due. So welcome to the “When Life Hands You Lemons” series haha. Story 1: Our move from hell.

As many know, my mother and I are roommates, and we have chosen to rent homes here in Florida until we find something that we love enough to purchase. When our lease came up for renewal (for the second time) on the last house, the owners decided they wanted to sell, and after months of looking for another home to rent in the area (and even being less picky than we usually are), we were unable to find anything. People are just not moving, with this whole COVID-19 thing, leaving us with the fear looming of being homeless.

In hindsight, this shouldn’t have surprised us. God works in mysterious ways, and in all honesty, my mother and I were just not happy in Port St Lucie. We were not unhappy, but we were not happy – just simply coasting through life rather than living it. Both of us had mentioned, at different times, looking elsewhere for a place, and had even considered moving closer to Orlando (or into Orlando) several times, but always “changed our minds,” concerned about traffic, or the pain of moving, etc. This was another moment where God forced us to make the decision, after many signs that where we were was just not the right place for us.

Back to the story —

After looking in the surrounding areas and still finding nothing, and honestly feeling stuck there because I had just begun a job a few weeks previous, Mom asked what I thought about looking in Lakeland for a place.

Here are the pros of Lakeland: We loved visiting there and did so every chance we got. It is an hour away from Disney World, a place where we spend a lot of time together. The place has history for our family – my dad grew up here, my parents dated here and then lived here after they were married, I have many wonderful memories of visiting my Grandparents here, and my father is buried here.

She started looking and when we came up to view a house, we knew that we were making the right decision. The house is not perfect, but it’s in a (mostly) quiet neighborhood (of only three streets) just a few minutes from the cemetery where Dad is. The yard is large, and full of flowering bushes, pineapple plants, and gorgeous palm trees. We immediately told the people that we would take it, and began the plans to move.

Now, today is the first day of Lent, and one of the things I gave up for Lent is complaining (choosing to give up things that keep me from being closer to God, rather than giving up things like chocolate), so I will keep the story of our move from hell brief haha.

The moving company was full of promises… and even more full of lies. The movers, though they seemed nice and appeared to feel sorry for us, spent a lot of time goofing off, and we are still finding things that they did wrong, several months later. We ended up having to rent two small moving trucks of our own to move all of our plants, quite a few boxes, etc – and took several trips back and forth doing so – but at least we didn’t have to deal with all of the heavy furniture that mom and I would have struggled moving on our own, so that’s a plus.

A few months later and we are still unpacking boxes – I know people who have spent years in a house and still have boxes – and I feel like we are constantly moving things around, not happy with the original places we chose for certain things, but I really like it here. The neighbors are nice. I enjoy spending as much time as I can in my yard (our screened-in porch is on the side of the house instead of the back, and there’s no fence) – I actually get excited when it’s time to mow the lawn – and the weather has been more wintry lately than we got the chance to enjoy in Port St Lucie for three years, while at the same time being summery perfect when it needs to be.

Will we spend the rest of our lives here in this house? No. The ceilings are just not high enough for our Christmas tree, and the smaller one as our main tree just did not work for me – it’s always the little things, right?

Are we a lot happier here? Yes. I love exploring the area and the stories my mom tells of my father never get old. I also love the chance that I can visit him whenever I want, and have been visiting him a lot lately, talking to him about stresses and things going on in my life (it makes me feel better, but I still miss him tremendously).

Life is an adventure, with or without the lemons, and I always look forward to seeing what will happen next.

Hyden Family Garden #2

megHan

My mother and I have been growing pineapple plants for some time now, and have quite a few, of varying sizes. They are such beautiful plants, so architectural, and even better when they start fruiting.

These two particular plants have fruited once before, but unfortunately, the squirrels and raccoons of my neighborhood enjoyed their feast before we could try them, so this time, when I noticed fruiting, we brought them inside our screened-in porch.

They are quite gorgeous when they first start out. Reds and purples. And the details.

As they get a little bigger, the purple becomes even more prominent.

And then, before long, the colors disappear, and it’s just browns and greens.

Figuring out when they’re ready to pick is easy. When they turn yellow. A beautiful bright yellow. Also pay attention to the fragrance, because as they start to turn yellow, you can really smell them. Knock on them – if they sound hollow, then they’re not ready yet; if they sound solid, they can be picked. (Note: You can pick them at green, and allow them to ripen, but don’t put them in the refrigerator because it can ruin the fruit.)

Today our pineapples were the most perfect color of yellow. Time for picking! Take a sharp knife and slice it at the bottom where it connects to the plant. (If you’re concerned about the readiness of any pineapple, whether growing your own or in a grocery store, pull on one of the top leaves. If it pulls out easily, it’s fresh.)

Our harvest of the day – and one gorgeously beautiful lemon.

Hyden Family Garden #1

megHan

I have been wanting to do a garden post for the longest, considering gardening is my biggest obsession in life, but I just haven’t had the heart, not with the fact that we’re moving in a few weeks. It just doesn’t seem worth the time and energy when the garden is going to completely change at a new house.

Then I woke up this morning, spent some time in the garden doing this and that, and decided that maybe, just maybe, I was going to do that first garden post. Not of the entire garden, but just of the front garden.

We are renting, so our plants (over 300) are all in pots. One of the things that we especially “hated” about the house we are currently renting are the bushes in front of the dining room window. They had not been cared for, were half dead when we moved in, and though they are growing back beautifully now (we cut them back and have fertilizing them, have spent the last year trying to convince them to grow a little more uniformally), they’re not to the point where they add any street appeal. In fact, without something there (and without the other pots we’ve added), the house looks quite drab.

We chose to put all of our ferns there, in front of the bushes, giving green to the front of the house while allowing the bushes behind time to grow back.

The last two mornings have involved repotting all of those ferns, as they all were getting too big for their containers. Hard work, but well worth it in the end.

It doesn’t really seem like a lot there, but these are what they looked like before we moved them out there (from our back work area):

To the right of all that is our “St Francis area.”

The larger of the two is really thriving out there in this position, and flowered quite nicely. It usually remains dormant for a few weeks, then comes back full of blooms. (I need to get out there and groom it a little, as well as tie some of it to the fan trellis behind it.)

The smaller one to the right has had some issues, so we’re hoping that being out there in this location will really give it some time to grow (and so far it has been working). The interesting thing about gardening is: it doesn’t matter how much you research and learn, things are still all about trial and error.

This is all in an area between the garage (on the right) and the front entry (on the left).

When we moved in, there wasn’t much color, so we quickly added color with our pots and flowering plants at the front entry.

One of the things I am most happy about when it comes to my front garden is actually the side garden. The sides of houses are always so boring, with nothing really there except for hoses and electrical boxes. We decided to add some plants down the side to add some color and life down the side.

I’ve liked this house, despite issues it has and issues with the owners, but I’m also excited to see where we will be next, and the way the garden will unfold there.

Questioning Advice from a Friend

megHan

A few months ago, when I was really going through some difficult life things, a friend of mine gave me some great advice:

“Not everyone is going to like you.”

Why? How do they know they’re not going to like me?

Growing up, my father always told me that you can’t dislike someone without knowing them, and that is the way I have lived my life.

You can’t tell by looking at someone what is in their heart, what is in their soul. Without speaking to them, without having an authentic conversation with someone, you don’t know anything about them, can’t learn anything about them, and therefore can’t make an educated decision about whether this person would be a good fit in your life or… whether you like them.

I just read that again. A couple of times. (Funny how writing something down makes you look at it in a new light.) I’ll explain what I figured out in a minute.

He would also tell me that you can’t judge a book by its cover – we’ve all heard that one – but until this moment, I never realized just how much the two pieces of advice go together.

Your outward appearance is your cover. How many times have you read a book based on the cover and found out that the insides were nothing like what you saw (or assumed) from the outside? Looking at someone and judging them on whatever it is you take exception to is judging a person based on the outside, and when you judge that person, deciding immediately you don’t like them because of that, then you never get to see the interior, never get to see what that person holds inside of them. (What’s that saying? “Beauty is but skin deep, ugly lies the bone; beauty dies and fades away, but ugly holds its own.”) Your missing out on true life lessons – and even possible lifelong friendships – because you allow yourself to be and keep yourself blind to who people really are.

So, back to the original two pieces of advice. She’s right – not everyone is going to like me. And he’s right – you can’t like someone without taking the time (and chance) to get to know them. Which makes me realize (epiphany, much?) that their dislike of me, for whatever reason, has nothing to do with me, and everything to do with them. They’ve chosen to dislike someone (and sometimes vocally) that they don’t know anything about, all based on their perceived (mis)conceptions based on (possible) outward appearance or something that is (wrong) in them (i.e. poor confidence, jealousy, etc). Because without knowing the actual person, you can’t make decisions, and when you do, your decision is not based on anything that is wrong with them and everything that is wrong with you.

So it’s not me. It never was. There is nothing wrong with me. Those people that attempted to make me feel less than, who tried to make me feel I needed to change who I was, without actually knowing who I was – they were the problem all along.

I’m going to continue having conversations with people that bring me connections… and going to stop worrying so much about the people that dislike themselves so much that they can’t truly get to know the people around them.

FEAR Causes Me to Do the SAME Thing OVER and OVER

megHan

I keep telling myself that social media is not the place for me, that there’s not enough people listening and too many people talking, that they are not and never really have been my friends, that I’m going to give up screaming in a room full of other people screaming… and yet, in the file pictured above, sit a bunch of blog post ideas (some almost completely written) for here, for the book blog, for the editing website… and I do nothing, but continue trying to be heard over everyone else who is trying to be heard.

The weird thing is that I really don’t care if people hear me, no matter how much I want to be heard.

Wait. Let me rephrase that. I, like lots of other people, WANT to be heard, but I don’t want to be heard by EVERYBODY. Instead, I just want to be heard by my people, people who may be thinking or feeling the same way that I am thinking or feeling. People who are going through the same things and need to know that they are not alone, as I need to know that I am not alone.

In my quest to be heard, by people who need to hear me and people I need to hear, I allow fear (of not being heard, of being judged, of being misunderstood, of being ignored) to make me continue doing the same things over and over again. Daily I go to Facebook in hopes that someone will listen to the words that I have so eloquently written, words that I hope will strike up a conversation, but instead, there is nothing. Crickets. A few likes, maybe, but never the conversation I hope for.

I take this as judgment, and I use that judgment against myself. Was I wrong in what I was feeling? Did the words I use not make sense to people who do not know the full story inside my head? Could I have communicated with more detail and less flowery prose? Am I the only one who feels this way or thinks this way?

And that’s when loneliness sets in. Because really, my strive to be heard is really just a mission to find people who I can relate to, who can relate to me.

I’m not going to find that on social media, and honestly, I feel like I’m backtracking into the days before the internet was something we used every day all day. I miss the “old days” when people wrote letters and talked to each other on the phone. When friendships were real and right in front of you.

I have removed the social media apps from my phone to try and cure myself of this disease, this need to be noticed by people who wouldn’t notice me if we were standing in the same room in real life, and instead, vow to make friends that are true, friendships that are meaningful.

And to write here more. Where I can be heard by my tribe. Rather than try to make people my tribe that aren’t deserving of the place.