I got caught last week pondering the beautiful combination of flowers in the massive pots outside of my parish church. I’ve always loved mixing colors, shapes, and sizes of the plants I chose for my containers, and these were exceptional. My thoughts were interrupted by the “planter” himself, who informed me that the secret to any good container garden was to use a Thriller, Filler, and Spiller. “Follow those rules, and you can never go wrong,” he added, leaving me deep in thought.
Looking over at the pot one last time, I called them each by name. Thriller for the height in the back, Spiller to drape over the front, and Filler to fill in. But in looking at the various plants, I immediately felt sorry for the fillers. If those Pentas were alone in a pot, they would be beautiful. But between the thriller and the spiller, they were mundane.
The words crept back into my mind during a quiet time in mass. Words sometimes do that. But this time, I thought about how they pertained to our daily lives. The thrillers are our wow moments: marriage, children, going to Buckees for the first time (let’s be honest— it was a big deal). Spillers are your anchors, the things you see upfront: your home, your job, and your pets. The fillers are the trudges of your daily life, the things not worth bringing up in conversation but necessary to live. The mundane. Once again, I felt sorry for the fillers. But why?
My thoughts took me back to a conversation I had with my husband many years before. I was griping about the many meaningless tasks I did every day and why they were so dull. Cooking dinner, doing laundry, and cleaning the house. He raised his eyebrows, questioning me about the cleaning house comment. I should take that one off my griping list. At any rate, I was caught up in mundane moments.
Then I found the Mother Teresa quote, “Do small things with great love,” and things began to make sense. My life is 95% full of small things, but when we do those things with love, they give us grace. And grace helps us to get into heaven. And I don’t know about y’all, but I REALLY want to go to heaven, and I need all the help I can get.
So, I’ve decided to try harder to accept the fillers in my life and pray that I can accomplish them with “great love.” To prove this, I filled my summer planters with Pentas ONLY! But come Fall, I’m adding some THRILLERS back into my life, and I can’t wait to find out what they may be.
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