We’re blooming again!
Though it’s the beginning of fall,
We’re blooming again.
After uprooting from a three year stay in a nearby town,
The first of many handfuls of seeds have been sown into the fields of our new beginning and yes, it delights us to see we’re blooming.
Moving is terribly difficult on the roots of a family.
Moving disrupts what has been deeply planted and watered in love of living life together; memories deep in the rich soil of neighbors, surroundings and the familiar.
Disturbing the gardens of family tempts the chance your fields won’t thrive and bloom as beautiful when re-potted into a new address.
Uprooting is always a risk.
Yet yielded to the Master Gardner tending your fields though,
You discover you bloom again,
You bloom where you are planted.
A new address stirs the morning cup of loneliness.
You sit outside and notice a neighborhood of unnamed faces.
People aren’t as friendly and passerby’s don’t notice your gesture of waving hello as the town we recently left.
Neighbors haven’t stopped to introduce themselves or sit for a momentary cup of coffee. Unless you can include that cute cat who hung around for a few days meowing for something to eat then vanished when your “meanie” husband banned you from feeding the stray.
I get over myself quickly though because after multiple seasons of uprooting in my life, I’ve discovered God always has his eyes on someone hurting and replants us next door to water their pain with His love;
To be His lamppost in a dark night, a bright light leading their lost way back to Him.
My heart already goes out to the single mom I noticed seated the other day on her front steps alone, the lonely mother I used to be so many decades ago.
The elderly mother living across the street from her young adult daughter with a child of her own already caught my attention; a scene played out in mine and my mother’s life two addresses ago.
Then there’s the recently widowed woman about my age quite possibly needing a friend.
Maybe the young married couple within view of our living room window could glean from our twenty-six years of marriage.
I have a feeling that the empty seats in my life won’t be empty for long.
The wisdom of God just tells us to
Bloom where we are planted.
We’re re-potted there for His purposes;
A mission trip of sorts without leaving the country, just the bountiful fields of your neighborhood.
We bloom to the cultivating hands of the Master Gardner.
Gardens grow when hearts are willing to die as seeds planted in the ground, surrendered to the Gardner’s weeding, watering and being given away for others.
In these gardens of replanting,
Consider it an opportunity, a privilege.
Consider it a given,
You’ll always bloom again.
Apples of Gold Encouragement 