I Asked For One That Cannot Be Killed

You asked them for the unkillable one.

You have asked more than one person that. It comes out as a joke, mostly. I need the one that survives anything. The one you cannot kill.

And people always have an answer, and you always nod, and then you leave without it.

Which is interesting, because you got exactly what you asked for and it still did not get you out of the door with a plant.

So the guarantee was never the thing.

Here is what I think is actually going on, and it is worth saying before anything practical.

You are not looking for a plant that cannot die. You are looking for a way to try that cannot end badly, and there is not one.

He remembereth that we are dust

There is a verse in the Psalms about how God handles fragility, and it is not what people expect.

Like as a father pitieth his children, so the LORD pitieth them that fear him. For he knoweth our frame; he remembereth that we are dust. (Psalm 103:13-14, King James Version)

He remembereth that we are dust.

You are held by somebody who accounts for fragility rather than requiring durability, and no unkillable thing has ever once been the condition of being kept. Psalm 103:14 says he remembereth that we are dust, and the Holy Spirit is the one who says that over a woman asking for a guarantee at a counter.

Sit with what dust means in that sentence. It is not a criticism. It is a specification.

Dust is what will not hold together under pressure. It blows away. It is the least durable material there is, and it is the one the Psalm reaches for to describe what we are made of.

And God does not respond to that by requiring us to be sturdier. He remembers it. He factors it in permanently, and nothing about the arrangement is conditional on us becoming something other than dust.

You were never asked to become unbreakable before you were held, and the fragility of a thing has never once been what determined whether it was worth keeping. The Spirit of God is what turns that from doctrine into something a woman can stand on at a counter, and Psalm 103 is where the dust is written down.

What the guarantee was standing in for

Now the practical half, and it is short.

Everything living dies. There is no version that does not.

The hardy ones are more forgiving of a missed week. That is all the word unkillable ever meant. It is a description of tolerance, not immortality, and the people who told you which one it was were not misleading you.

But you have been treating the word as though it were a promise about the outcome, and no plant on any shelf anywhere can give you that.

You have been asking a shelf for a guarantee nothing on it has ever once been able to make, and the asking has never been unreasonable. What is written in Psalm 103:14 accounts for what will not last rather than demanding what will, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lets a woman stop shopping for certainty.

And here is what the guarantee was really for, and I say this gently because it is a decent instinct badly aimed.

It was insurance against a verdict. If the plant is unkillable and it dies, then the failure is clearly yours, which sounds like the opposite of insurance until you look at it again. What the guarantee actually promised was a world where you would not have to find out.

So long as you never take the unkillable one home, the question of whether you can keep something stays open. And an open question is survivable in a way that an answer might not be.

You have been protecting an open question rather than a plant, and no answer to it has ever once been the thing waiting for you at home. The Spirit of God is the one who says that without accusing anybody, and Psalm 103 is the ground under the dust.

Take whatever is in front of you

So the instruction is almost the opposite of what has been happening at that counter.

Take home whatever is in front of you. Guarantee or not. Do not ask which one survives anything, and if somebody volunteers it, thank them and take the one you already had in your hand.

That is not recklessness. It is removing the one variable that has been keeping you at the counter, which is the search for a plant that cannot produce a bad outcome.

And then put it where you already stand every morning. Not in the best light in the house. Where your feet already go before seven.

You are free to bring one home with nothing attached to it, and taking the ordinary one has never once been the same as not caring whether it lives. Psalm 103:14 remembers that we are dust and keeps us regardless, and the Holy Spirit is the one who gets a woman out of a doorway with a pot in her hands.