For weeks now the clematis has needed a trellis or wire on the wall. I’ve watched its fragile stem bend over and hang down. I’ve watched it, out my kitchen window, be hammered by the wind, blown about and bruised until some bits finally died.
So this morning I declared (sweetly) I would no longer wait for the handyman to put up the trellis. I’d found some green wire and that was my first job of the day.
He let me get underway. He heard the ladder scraping against the stones as he worked at the computer upstairs. Fear drove him outside. Fear that he might next hear a crashing of ladder to ground and then ... nothing.
Well, it’s a tactic that’s worked a few times in our 37 years together. Glad to see it still has power.
And so the drill came out (how can a man do anything without a drill?), the sturdy wire was found, the eyelets screwed into the concrete and hey, presto, the clematis is now ready to grow (if it ever warms up), securely supported against the wall.
It wasn’t only the clematis that needed support. I wasn’t really in danger of dying (I don’t think, anyway!), but had I been left to do the work, it would have been much less robust and probably would have been inadequate within a few months or years.
Makes me think of Paul’s definition of the church as a body made up of many parts, each person with her own unique gifts to share. One of the gifts is of encouragement. An encouraging word can enable someone else to flower. An encouraging word is often unnoticed by others, but forms the support on which a fruitful church can flourish.
I hope that I am always open to encourage others to be all that they can be. I may be rubbish when it comes to DIY handy work, but I can open my mouth and tell others what a good job they are doing.
Which reminds me. I better just pop upstairs to the man on the computer, and tell him how wonderfully stable the clematis now looks.
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