I think I found my calling

Today, I suppose I had a mini moment.  I got my grandson yesterday and I had to take him home today know that it could be a while before I see him again. I was already a bit emotional.  After I dropped him off, I went to the grocery store.  The barren shelves at Walmart were startling.  I left there feeling more frightened by something than I ever have.  I stayed pretty disturbed by it all until I had a conversation with my daughter.  She always helps me put things into a better perspective.  Today, I’d like to share a little bit of insight with you.

Way back in 2010, long before the present day madness was upon us, I felt very compelled to be prepared.  I lived alone in an apartment so I could not start a garden but I began gathering tools and supplies.  I began building a stash of food and water. This was not just the fall out from watching one to many episodes of Doomsday Preppers.  There was a deep spiritual connection to me. The very first flutterings that something was coming down the line and it wasn’t going to be good.   I wish I had stayed on the path.  I wish I had kept my spiritual connections as deep as they were back then.  It might have helped me more now in terms of tangible goods but those seeds that were sown then are still there.  They have just been dormant until now.

There has been a whole lot of life lived since 2010.  That’s for sure.  I moved a few times.  I tried to go back to being a Baptist.  I stopped prepping and getting ready. I went through the dark night of the soul and a spiritual rebirth that was painful but amazing.  I quit a job that was making me suicidal. I ran out of money. I got a part job. My businesses failed. By the time I got to now, it’s been such an amazing ride looking back. On the surface, it looks like some bad mojo went down in my world but not really.  I found my freedom from self-hatred and the narcissism that ruled me most of my life.  You can’t ask for a better gift from the Universe than that.  Sometimes, you just have to walk through the proverbial fire to get it.

That leads me to present tense. Before the virus turned the world on it’s ear, my efforts to go to work full time and save my businesses fell flat.  It was the most disappointing time for me but the Universe really has my back here.  I just didn’t know it at the time.  My jewelry store would not have survived this trip into the surreal for sure. It was better to have let it go when it closed than to have struggled through the uncertainty that is unfolding in our world today.

To be honest, when I began several weeks ago, it was to find a way around having such a tiny budget and still contribute to my household.  There was nothing spiritual about what I was doing.  I sat down to figure out ways to help my own household, one of the first things I thought of was building a garden in the back yard.  Learning about couponing and comparison shopping was another boon.  It helped us to build our stockpile before the virus madness began.  Granted, it was a baby stockpile and not like the enormous stashes that some couponers have going on in their basements right now.  But it was a beginning. 

As time began to pass, my spirituality has emerged from the dark night into a more light centered practice. I began to feel again that sense of urgency that something was coming that we needed to be prepared for and my efforts began to turn a bit more into the long term.  I needed to figure out how to grow food without the deer eating it and not just the peppers and tomatoes that I started out wanting to try.   I bought more seeds. I kept trying to get things started and I’ll keep going. As a result, we are as prepared as we were able to get in a few short weeks.  I’m learning that it was steps ahead of the rest of the community.  The bare shelves at Walmart are the testimony to that.  I was just replacement shopping and very little got replaced!

We are here in the moment that spirit was warning me about.  This was the reason that I needed to turn my focus away from my business and turn it on to how to live more sustainably.  How can I subsistence farm in a postage stamp back yard?  What can I produce now that will help provide for my family the further this situation goes south?  Stocking up on canned goods and meats only provides sustenance for the short term.  A well prepared person goes the step beyond and is prepared for the long term.

I think that’s what my calling might actually be when I stop to think about it. What have I loved more than anything else in all my years?  I have loved veggies!  I love eating them.  I love cooking them.  I love that yummy deliciousness that only comes from fresh vegetables.  They never taste like a tin can or plastic or have that frozen food taste. Oh my goodness, I suppose that would be a kitchen witch’s version of heaven---a kitchen full of fresh!

To me, it’s like the Morrigan gave me a mission. Find out how to feed yourself and your family on nothing. It’s not that you don’t spend a dime on a garden because there’s tools and supplies that you’ve got to buy but once you get started, what you’re investing is your time and your energy.  This was my mission.  It’s to teach the people that we don’t have to destroy our planet to live on our planet.  That we can turn our back-yard space into havens where good food is grown so we aren’t sick and dying with the chemically induced cornucopia of diseases that are so prevalent right now. To help steer our people away from the commercially produced wasteland and back to the land itself. To the natural.  No, not everybody can but we can share with those who can’t. Make it green again instead of so much concrete and asphalt.

I don’t know.  I guess I just see myself at some point in the future, offering up my home grown sages and herbs and fragrant flowers and teas that come from my own land. Sustainably raised and harvested and not polluted by chemical pesticides or gmo gene splicing. I don’t think I’m anywhere near that right now. First, I just have to learn on the fly and figure out how to  grow things where I’m at. Right here. Right now.  In the middle of the worst crisis I can recall in recent history. 

In my mind, I keep hearing that line in Ferngully when the Crone Fairy is encouraging her prodigy, “Help it grow, Crysta.”  She’s using her fairy magic to help the forest grow.   It’s an awesome image.  That’s my calling right now so maybe I should say, “Help it grow, Lisa. The power is always within you.”  Yeah, it might be several shades corny but I think I'm good with that.  Yup, I'm loving that.  Lisa, the Garden Witch. 

Many blessings,

Lisa