Where Are You Planted?

That’s a lovely sentiment. Wherever you are, do your best to make life better for those around you. Very sweet.

But where are you planted?

Over the past year, I have been challenged in so many ways. Our new pastor is asking me to play the piano in ways I have never done before. My husband thought I should direct the High School play for our homeschool group. We got a Great Pyrenees puppy that we are going to have to walk around the neighborhood instead of toss out the door to do his business, the way we have with our dogs in the past, because he runs away. Some writers I met at a conference last year recommended I switch my self-publishing platform, which means getting new identification numbers and getting used to a new system, and computers make me cry or yell.

I had been wondering if I could stay in my flowerpot and bloom right there, having someone (such as my husband or kids or church) take care of me and move my pot to the best environment to make me bloom the best way possible. After all, I’m a grandma. My schooling kids are pretty self-sufficient. I don’t have to cook dinner for twelve people, anymore. I’m starting to feel the arthritis and the fatigue that comes with spending a good bit more than half a century on this earth. Can’t I just stay in my flowerpot and bloom? I look pretty. I’m making life sweet for someone.

What’s the alternative?

Let’s be honest, a flower that grows in a crack in a sidewalk isn’t going to last long or grow very big. A flower in a flowerpot is going to be limited in its growth because of the confinement of its roots. It will also have to rely on the people who put it there to feed and water it and make sure it gets the right amount of light. But a flower in the garden has to lean on what God provides (with a little help keeping down the weeds from the gardener). After that, it can go as far as it is able.

What has God been telling me? Get out of the pot. Transplant into the garden bed. Have soil around me that I can drop seeds in, and dead leaves to mulch that soil, instead of having someone deadhead me and clean the dead leaves up off the table. Get messy. Have room to spread out. Rely on God for watering. It is scary, because, sometimes, the rain doesn’t come. Sometimes, the wind does. But look at the difference!