My plants speak to me.

I’m a novice gardener and have a reputation of being cruel to my houseplants, but the few plants I do have around teach me a lot.

I bought this little cactus a couple of months ago because I loved the bright bloom and thought it would be a cheery addition to my kitchen windowsill. It never hurts to have something pretty to look at while scrubbing dishes.

Earlier this week, I noticed that my little cactus looked strange, so I poked it. (The quills on this particular cactus are only on the flower. Don’t worry.) Imagine my surprise when instead of resisting my poke, as a plant should, it crinkled. It crinkled like paper, and I could see the water sloshing inside the stem.

Like I said, I’m new at this, but I didn’t think that was normal. Not sure that there was anything I could do, I sat back and watched to see what would happen.

Sure enough. Today, just a few days later, the cactus is dead. It is completely withered. I’m not going to analyze why it might have died (because I’m almost positive that it’s my fault), but while the little cactus was on its death bed, it reminded me of something pretty profound.

A lot of us are walking around like that cactus. We look fine from the outside most of the time. We dress ourselves nicely, put on a smile, and face the world with the brightest outlook we can muster. No one suspects anything is wrong on the inside, because the outside looks so good.

All too often, though, we’re dying on the inside. We’re withering and crumpling and dying, and by the time anyone sees that something is wrong, it’s too late to do anything about it. We hide it for so long that we reach the point of no return before anyone knows we need rescuing.

That was a good reminder to me to allow others into my life – into my struggles and into my heartache – so that when I need rescuing and a helping hand, I can receive it while there’s still time. If I don’t allow people to help me, I have no one to blame but myself when I finally do collapse.

Perhaps that only makes sense to me….but it was a good reminder.

If one falls down, the other can help him up. But it is bad for the person who is alone and falls, because no one is there to help. (Ecclesiastes 4:10)