BLOOM Where You're Planted

It was a peaceful week.  The week we packed like camping but stayed in a cozy cabin by a lake.  Our mission: search God, search selves.  I was desperately hoping for answers. It has not always been easy, living in a home not my own.  Clipping my wings and packing into tiny spaces what, for almost 20 years, has been spread out and expounded on by my own desires.... no, not always easy at all.

But this is where God called us.

Why do I feel so unsettled at times then?  If He calls, doesn't He also provide peace and well-being?

I spent the week praying.  I heard some answers but one of the answers seemed hushed.

Why?

As I readied for bed our last night there a whisper swept over my heart, "I have some last words to share, meet me, tomorrow, 6 a.m."  It seemed odd; all week wanting to speak and hear but the last few hours of the last day was the time He wanted to claim.

I arose, ready to meet the One Who calls.  I prepared myself and sat.  "God?"  Nothing.  I sat.  Then a whisper, journal.  I began to journal, not sure what to write but hoping my scribbling would help me to hear what needed to be said.

Friday, October 28

My hand froze.  The date staring back at me.  The day that started with joy and quickly tumbled to despair came rushing back to me.  It was a Monday then.  The year was 2002 and she was only 48.  She was my mother and her memory still lingers.  The last phone calls, the screams and cries when I heard, 2000 miles away she lay cold and lifeless.  I sat huddled on couch, body shaking with sobs, phone clenched in hand my heart in pieces, my youngest growing within.

It took many years to glue those pieces back together.  Many years before I would learn how heartache makes us stronger.  I looked at that date on the page and I heard His voice.  Like Jesus at the well, knowing her answers but asking so she would realize too.  "Do you wish she were back, would you change it all?"  I searched my heart and I knew my answers to be true, "no".

Mom spent 28 of my years teaching me both the good lessons and bad.  In her final years before chronic pain taxed her body and took her life, she came to know Jesus in a way that showed me how to find my way again.  In her final years she reminded me how to truly love God again.

In the time since, I have grown and bloomed and learned how to be stronger on my own in Christ.  I have grown deeper roots and brighter blooms and I don't know that I could have done that if mom were still here.

I began to scribble and realize in the pages of my journal that God had been trying to speak to me that entire week!  He had tried to show me, shout to me, steer me.  But I wasn't listening... I wasn't really leaning close but rather plugging ahead in my own way.

I heard Him now.

We can't move forward when we hold onto the past.  It was when I let go of my hurt for my mom and embraced the healing of Christ that I became whole again.  My Spirit grew and my life became rich again.  My current situation was no different.  It is in the letting go of what was and embracing what is that God can begin to use us.  It is in this place that He has called me now.  HE sees the value... He is just waiting for me to see it too.

Then I remembered the object he had tried to use earlier in the week to show me this lesson.  I coated up, grabbed the camera and left as the sky began to lighten.  I had to go see if it was still there.

 I walked until the path's end but didn't see it.  My heart ached.  If I had only listened sooner.  I turned to head back and there it was.

 Late October frosts, deer, the season's campers and the path it grew over did not sway its disposition.

 It sat, hunched some from the morning frost, 'hair' a bit messy from the night's sleep.

 But it was there.  The entire hillside had been covered with daisies in the spring.  Now, in late fall, only this one remained.  Why?  I can't know.  But it sat, poised, keeping watch over the lake, the path, and its tiny little spot thereby.  A bright little reminder of the hope spring held here in the midst of colored and dying leaves and brush.

As I shuffled back to the cabin, chilled by the early morning air, I prayed, I waited and I listened.

See this daisy?  See where I have it planted?  It is sturdy and strong and while it should be gone now, it is not.  It grows.  You too have been planted where you are.  For a season, for a purpose and you too have been made strong.  Not just to stretch roots and spread leaves... but to BLOOM.

God gave me a vision of a similar daisy in a run-down city lot.  Growing amongst the rubble and blooming where it was planted.  Of passer-bys pausing to marvel and, despite the dilapidated surroundings, the hearts lifted to see this momentary beauty in a sea of darkness.

He showed me this is us too.

He challenged me...

WILL YOU BLOOM WHERE YOU ARE PLANTED?  Not just grow but BLOOM?  To bring hope and light in the otherwise dreary places.



May you Bloom this week... no matter where you are planted... may His love and strength help you grow.

They are like a tree planted by streams of water,
   which yields its fruit in season
and whose leaf does not wither—
   whatever they do prospers. 

Psalm 1:3

Blessings sweet friend,

Every life has testimonies of how God intercedes to show His power and glory.  To read the first installment in a brand new series of books about God's divine work in one person's life, click below