Strong at the broken places

Quarantine killed my shamrock plant.

Its leaves had drooped to form a wilted brown ring around its sky blue pot, which greeted me when I returned to my apartment after three months of quarantining with my family.

I had hastily left it behind, firmly convinced that I would be gone for three weeks, tops. A close friend had given me this shamrock plant during an unexpected hospital stay a year-and-a-half ago. For a year, the plant reminded me of this friendship and felt like a link to my many Irish relatives spread over the East Coast. I had been equal parts shocked and proud that I had managed to keep it alive for a year.

As I dejectedly pulled the dead leaves from the dry, cracked soil, I remembered my mom’s advice that frequent watering might resurrect a seemingly dead shamrock plant. I doused it with half the contents of my oversized water bottle, a practice that I continued for several weeks — whenever I remembered.

I know. I could have been a contender for worst plant mom award, boasting my soggy patch of earth formerly known as a shamrock plant.

My sense of loss continued during a recent weekend, when I attended a meeting that brought unexpected, and honestly, unwelcome change to my life. It felt especially heavy in the wake of other drastic changes that have characterized 2020.

So afterwards, I sped to Trader Joe’s, my go-to spot for gorgeous and economically priced flowers (a rare combination, in my experience). Amid all the uncertainties in my life and in the world, I could at least control my apartment and fill it with pink flowers. Or so I thought.

When I arrived, nearly two dozen masked people stood outside, baking in the merciless sun of the 90-degree day as they waited to enter the store for a safe, socially distanced shopping experience. The air conditioning in my car was not having its most productive day, so I decided to cut my losses and turn home.

As I dropped my keys in their dish on the counter next to the shamrock plant, I stopped short. One tiny, emerald bud had poked its head through the dark earth.

I stared incredulously at it. COVID couldn’t kill this, I remember thinking. This little plant was dead, broken…but now it’s not. It’s bringing beauty again. COVID couldn’t kill this.

In his novel, A Farewell to Arms, Ernest Hemmingway wrote: “The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places.”

I want to be strong at the broken places.

I want to be strong at the places that have suffered excruciating hardship and should be left for dead.

The crosses that I’ve carried during the COVID-19 pandemic are insignificant when compared with those that others have hoisted. But worldwide events of the last five months have inflicted loneliness, fear, doubt in God’s providence, and a longing for the life I once led. I refuse to give these forces the last word.

The other day as I wondered how to resist these voices, I looked — I mean really looked — at the thick wooden crucifix hanging above my kitchen table.

I looked at the broken places where iron pierces flesh and blood and wood and bone.

And I realized that, as I strive to be strong at the broken places, Jesus will never leave me to do it on my own.

My shamrock plant now teems with new buds. I’ve lost count of their number. Every day I glance at it as I grab my keys before going out into a world that makes less and less sense to me. Each thriving leaf reminds me that I never face it alone.