Where You are Planted

For the last two years, spring at our house has been like one giant scavenger hunt! The previous owners of our property must have really loved things that bloom, because everywhere you turn something is popping out of the ground or a tree is flowering into a beautiful sight.  The interesting thing is, some of the places these things are planted makes no sense to me.  We have an abundance of beautiful daffodils, but they pop through the ground in the strangest places.  There are some trees that I really wondered why on earth they are planted, especially when they seemed crowded together, but when spring came and I saw them bloom I had a little better understanding.  Because I did not plant these things, it is often hard for me to understand their location, but some things (like the location of the trees), as they bloom, I am starting to see the purpose in where they are.

We recently celebrated our wedding anniversary in quarantine.  Now I have seen lots of fun pictures on social media of people celebrating their quarantine anniversary with cute candlelit dinners and their children serving their meal them- and that is great- but that is not the stage of life we currently live in.  As we ate the dinner I prepared, our 4-year-old was refusing to join us at the table because he was mad at us (in truth he was just super exhausted from playing hard all afternoon) and our 9-month-old was expressing his dissatisfaction at the speed in which he was being fed.  We could either laugh or cry, so we chose to laugh about how “needy” this current stage is.

Our dinner adventure also led to some conversations between (A) and I about how life changes.  There was a season where an anniversary celebration would have been a big deal, a romantic dinner, gifts, and reminiscing.  That was in the early years.  While I promise you our marriage means no less to us now, this stage is so very different.  (Had we not been in quarantine, we would have attempted a dinner date, but still much different from the romantic celebrations of the early years.)  It would be easy to get upset about how things have changed over the years, and the way things are a little more hectic and complicated in this phase of life, but if we were busy being upset we would miss out on all the great things about this stage.  If you are looking back at what you once had, or forward at what is coming, it is easy to miss the best parts about the here and now.  Sometimes, you have to bloom where you are planted, right now.

We have gone from dolled up and wedding fancy, to super hero suits chosen for us by our son.  The stages change, but there is beauty in the here and now of each one.

My “word” for the year 2020 is PURPOSE.  And I believe God gave it to me because I was questioning some of the current places I am planted.  Our ministry move two years ago brought us to a state where taxes are high, state government makes decisions I really struggle to understand, and we have had more than one extremely challenging situation that we have never experienced before because of the differences in our new state.  I teach in a very tiny, rural school where I have two grade levels in one room- while that was common 100 years ago, you can imagine the challenges that brings in a time where state educational standards for one grade are tough enough to accomplish in a school year, let alone accomplish all those for two grades at one time.  And even though we have now been here two years, I am still often struggling to find “my place” socially and within our church.  I was asking God a lot of “WHY?”  His response to me was PURPOSE, I have a plan and a purpose for you right where you are now.  Over the last few months, I have focused on praying about that purpose and seeing that purpose.  I have found some opportunities, that I didn’t quite expect, to use the gifts and talents God put inside of me right in my current situations. 

Sometimes the place we find ourselves doesn’t exactly seem ideal, or at least not the way we envisioned it would look, but that shouldn’t stop us from finding a way to blossom and be beautiful in the place right where we are.  Other things we may not understand, because we didn’t choose the “location” in which we were planted.  But if we allow ourselves to bloom, right where He planted us, the sight can be extremely beautiful. 

Then Job replied to the Lord: “I know that you can do all things; no purpose of yours can be thwarted.  You asked, ‘Who is that that obscures my plans without knowledge?’ Surely I spoke of things I did not understand, things too wonderful for me to know.” Job 42:1-3