December 16, 2022
Part One
There’s dirt all over the floor. I suppose there must be a tidy way to pot amaryllis bulbs, but it isn’t the method I’m using. A stack of fresh pots, Costco-grade box of foil for wrapping the pots, a bag of potting soil, a Chopstick for poking drainage holes–I’ve pulled out all the tools of the trade. Half the table is covered in shiny pots of dirt with the bulb tips tucked up out of the soil line. Tiny green shoots protrude from a few of the tops, a hint of fat stalks visible in others; two have even started sending up the stalks, rising three inches above the dirt.
Half the floor is covered in a stack of amaryllis plants from previous years, pulled up from hibernation to have another go. I leave them out all summer, where they lap up the DC humidity, then store them in the dark for a few months to force the winter bloom. I’m still honing the craft–one my parents practiced when I was growing up and my mom carries on–but if you time it right, you can trick the bulb into thinking the fall hibernation was a winter gone by, and now it’s spring and time for a show. Bulbs of light, my family calls them, bursting from shiny pots of dirt into exuberant trumpets right as the holiday hubbub is dying down in January and you could really use a pop of good cheer.
With any luck, a few of these bulbs will generate flowers again this year. Some of the bulbs are tiny, having used up all their energy stores in the previous boom and not yet regathered strength. The DC summers help–all that floppy green foliage spreading to the sun sends nutrients back to the bulb, preparing it for the winter’s eruption of color. But sometimes it takes more than one cycle, especially with my not overly-precise timing or excessively-diligent gardening style. Sometimes the green shoots flourish, then die back, no show this year. But it’s all part of the process; maybe next year the bulb will be big enough, and the giant amaryllis flowers, big as grapefruits, will erupt once more.
But before there are flowers, there is dirt, on the floor, on my clothes, on my hands. An hour ago the room was tidy. The boxes of old potted bulbs were tucked away down stairs, the bag of potting soil was put away. It’s all ruined now, though–this chaos is the equivalent of burning the ships. The only way back to clean is through the mess, making more of it before it gets better. I unearth old bulbs, disturbing clouds of settled dust, tearing off brittle used foil, settling the roots in and holding the bulb up at the right level as I repacking dirt around the bulb. It’s messy, and it’s all part of the process. It’s the messy middle.
Sometimes beginning is easy–there’s fresh excitement over big plans. Even things that are hard to begin gain momentum once you finally put the gears in motion: the words that kick off the break-up you know you need to force, the first line of the memo you’re stalling writing, getting out the tools for the clearing project you dread. It’s painful, it’s scary, but at least you’ve started. The imaginary worry looming large in your mind’s eye becomes something concrete, maybe even shrinks down to size, becomes an approachable problem. That creates some energy, a rush of satisfaction at overcoming the inertia or fear.
But that initial rush is almost never enough to see you through to the other side–the ideal where you have both a tidy row of potted plants and a clear floor. Before you get there, you’re almost certainly going to hit the messy middle. Everything is in disarray and you can’t go back to the stable (if terrible) steady state you had before; you mourn the loss of it like the Israelites in the desert longing to go back to Egypt, even if you know in your heart it wasn’t worth keeping. You don’t know if you can keep plodding through to the other side of the mayhem. What if you’re stuck in the messy middle forever?
The end of a calendar year tends to prompt reflection, looking back at the year that was, ideally to see indicators of progress. What are the trophies, the things you’ve overcome, the questions resolved? Sometimes life aligns with the calendar, and a December lookback might actually unearth valuable markers–but there’s no reason why the 12 month period beginning the previous January 1 should automatically be the timeline for any given life project. And if the messy middle is in fact the largest part of any change–isn’t that where you’re more likely to be on December 31, statistically speaking. So?
A friend mourns this lack of resolution come December, as my amaryllis bulbs sits waiting on the table. I pick up a few of them. “Look,” I show her. This is a brown shriveled ball in a pot of dirt. It’s brown, unremarkable. But all summer long its roots were taking in nutrients, its leaves were photosynthesizing. Nothing happened to the bulb from our perspective, but under the soil line, the roots were getting fat, the bulb was expanding. It looks like there was no progress to speak of. “But see here”–I point to the top of the bulb. “Look again!” There is a sliver of a green shoot peeking out. “It isn’t dead. All this time, something has been happening, and any day now, this is going to explode, and look like” I swap pots, showing her one with a three inch stalk “this one!” We never know which day it will pop, but seemingly overnight, out it shoots and suddenly there’s a tall stalk, and just as suddenly some blossoms unfold. All that time the progress might not have been linear, might not have been visible, but it was happening. The messy middle was slowly giving way to beauty.
Could that happen with us?
Of course it does. Problem is, we can largely see it in retrospect. The new relationship that fell into place all of a sudden after the overdue breakup. The just right job that opened up but only after we finally walked away from the just-good-enough job with no prospects waiting for us. The slow unfolding of feeling at home in yourself after a move that doesn’t seem to come for months but at some point, a dinner party, a walk in the neighborhood, falls on you with clarity, and you can look back and realize, oh yes, now I am at home here. The angst that becomes peace, the anxiety that finds its rest, the thing we can’t force that we learn to let go of. It happens.
But we didn’t know that when we walked away, took the risk. We hoped, but we weren’t guaranteed anything about life working out in any particular felicitous way.
And unlike amaryllis bulbs, we can’t force a premature winter and curate a bloom precisely when it suits us. Life has its way with us, winter comes at its own pace. We have to hibernate when the season changes, and wait to bloom until it changes again. We have to endure the messy middle, keep plodding through the mayhem (or the monotony), believing the messy middle is a chapter in the story, not the final arc. I remain confident of this: I will see the goodness of the LORD in the land of the living. Wait for the LORD; be strong and take heart and wait for the LORD, the Psalmist urges. No guarantees of a conventional happy ending, but a hope in God’s goodness, experienced tangibly, here and now.
And not only this. Often, it’s the messy middle that forms us, gives us a chance to become the kind of people who can hold the beauty on the other side. Suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame. The kind of person we want to become, the beauty we want to see unfold in ourselves–how else but through suffering, struggle, vulnerability, risk–all the stuff we’d perfer to avoid–does it tip over the soil line, make it’s way upward, blossom in brilliant color? (Or in the inverse, *who transforms on a cruise?)
The messy middle stinks. But there’s no shortcut.
*For more on this, to be precise, why the cruise ship image is the opposite of flourishing, I highly recommend Andy Crouch’s Strong and Weak. I heard him explain his 2×2 grid regarding Power and Vulnerability about six years ago, and it was so relevant and true I’ve been thinking about it off and on ever since.
