Grow Where You are Planted

“Grow where you’re planted!”

I’d been yelling that phrase a lot lately... at the dirt ... in my garden.  Little buggers, otherwise known as seeds, did not grow fast enough for my patience level (which is comparable to that of a 3-year-old learning calculus), but then one glorious day we had baby plants!  When I saw those adorable little sprouts, I jumped for joy then looked to my husband and said, “Those look like beans; I thought we planted snap peas there...”  Lesson learned:  Plant markers are a good idea.

Isn’t that kind of how life works too though?  We plant something (figuratively), wait for it to grow and then one day it sprouts, but hold on, that’s not what you thought you had planted...  Or let’s take it a step further;  God plants us somewhere and we think we’re going to grow into this beautiful sunflower (or strong tree, for you men) but when we look in the mirror we see a dandelion, which is still very useful in many medicinal ways, but not quite the sunflower you were hoping for.  (Well that was unexpected.)  So, instead of focusing on what you grew into, take that moment and focus on the fact that you grew; let God take care of the rest.

God’s plans are, in my opinion, can be the most elusive entity I’ve ever encountered.  So many times the Lord found me on my knees in some sanctuary, bawling my eyes out begging for His answer or His direction for my life.  My most relevant experience, I believe I mentioned before, was when I was moving here to Omaha from Salem, Oregon.

I was visiting a friend while she was still in college some years back, when she had to leave for class.  I had a couple hours to kill while I waited, so I decided to wander the campus.  Eventually I found myself in the chapel ... and then on my knees.  Alone, with tears streaming down my face, I begged God to tell me if I was supposed to move to Omaha or not.          
I was quite unhappy in Oregon and needed change for my life and the friends here were begging me to move back.  While I was praying, I lifted my head and felt the most overwhelming sense of peace and assurance that I was going to call Omaha my home.

That was ten years ago, and I’ve lived in Omaha for seven of those years, as of last month.  I’m happily married, my husband and I close on our first house this month and I just completed my fourth year with LCM.  I have my Thanksgiving Day “ministry” (which I just like that I get to eat delicious food with some amazing people), I was given the newsletter to create each month, and I’m working on redesigning the mission of my art ministry “heARTeffect”.

God has been so good and has made me realize that my plan had NOTHING to do with His plan for me here.  Not only did I get planted and grow here,
I flourished and prospered here.  I’m the happiest I’ve ever been in my life and it’s all because God took me from my roots in Oregon and transplanted me here.

Grow where you are planted ... trust that God has a plan for your life wherever it is He decides to take you, be sure to listen and most importantly, obey... don’t be the next Jonah. :)

Snowballs in June?

When I was 19 years old, I lived in my own little house.  It was tiny, but it was mine, all mine.  Unfortunately with my own place came my own responsibilities and those nasty little buggers called bills.

But one day it seemed my life was getting filled with a  slew of error messages; it felt like every little thing that could go wrong, was.  My sky light was leaking, my electric bill tripled and I couldn’t figure out why, I was fighting with my phone company, a hobo spider decided to take residence in my home (they’re about twice the size of wolf spiders here),  and my job was just giving me grief.  Overall I was miserable.  In tears I called my grandparents for guidance and that’s when they said, “It seems your life is snowballing”.  It took me a minute but I figured out what they meant; they were saying that all those little trials that I was experiencing were gathering up on me like snow would to a snowball rolling down a hill.  Those trials gathered and gathered until collectively the little issues were one overwhelming problem.  I was careening downhill just waiting until I hit a tree to  smash into a million pieces... and that’s exactly what happened.

One by one, I tackled the issues that were occurring; in the end I quit my job and lost my home but took that as an opportunity to start over.  I took all those little things that piled up and thought about what I learned from those instances.

Recently I had yet another experience with “snowballing”.  Between “fighting” with the federal loan service, changing my name and dealing with that process, figuring out what I want to do with my life and trying to find my husband and I our first home, etc., I kept reminding myself that God was in control.  I kept telling myself that this was all in God’s hands, that He hadn’t failed me before, so why would He start now?  But I would have had to start from square one if I didn’t have those previous trials.  I wouldn’t have known the mentality that I needed in order to make it through this “snowballing” session, if I hadn’t gone through it before.

Digging through Pinterest, which is a common past time of mine, I stumbled across a saying that I love.  It says, “All you need is faith and strength.  Faith that it will get better and strength to hold on until it does.”  This is in line with the verse found in James 1:2-4, “Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.”

I would not be the person I am today if I hadn’t gone through all the trials I had gone through.  The strength I now have, the confidence, the determination and dedication; many aspects of my character that were developed by those trials would not have come to pass if God hadn’t seen fit for me to be challenged by them.  Many times have I careened down a mountain side, gathering a multitude of issues and trials while in the middle fighting my way to the surface; to break it apart, make it smaller and more manageable, only to come out stronger and wiser through the grace of God.


Praise be to God for the trials we face.