My friend just wrote a post about the saying, “Bloom where you are planted” and it reminded me of my own story.

Many years ago my mother-in-law gave me a little sign that read, “Bloom where you are planted.”  It hung on a long metal stick that you place in the dirt of a potted plant (pictured above).

I placed it on my great Aunt Jettie’s table in a Christmas cactus.

The cactus is still there and so is the sign.

Bloom where you are planted.

That sign mocked me each time I passed it!  I hated that sign.  It wasn’t the sign’s fault, or the saying per se, but I felt stuck.  I was stuck in a community that I didn’t feel was very kind and warm towards me.  I was an outsider you see.  I wasn’t born within the couple of miles that made me “one of them” and I wasn’t raised at “their” church.  Stupid sign:  Bloom where you are planted.  (I’m sure the people didn’t intend to treat “outsiders” like that, but they did.)

Are you kidding?  I wanted to live anywhere else but here.  Don’t get me wrong, I was thankful for my husband and thankful that we had a home, but I wanted it to be far enough away that we could start our own lives TOGETHER — ALONE — not with the rest of the community and others involved.  Things were way too close here.  BLOOM WHERE YOU ARE PLANTED, uh sure.  Bloom where I was suffocated?

I don’t know if it was my own perception due to the level of rejection my young self felt or if my feelings were on target.

I didn’t have any heart-friends at my husband’s home church for many years.   My heart-friends were the new people that began attending.  Suddenly I wasn’t the only “outsider” at “their” church and I began to bloom.   Bloom where you are planted.   Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying there weren’t some sweet people at that place, but those were my feelings nonetheless.  (Now many of the people at that church ARE new people and the atmosphere is much different.)

Years passed and I matured — still in the same community — still at the same church.   The sign didn’t mock me as MUCH as it did before.  But still, there needed to be more autonomy in our lives.  We were so bundled up with everyone else, it was hard to bloom.  There was little air.

Have you ever purchased a potted plant just to remove the container and find a bunch of roots bundled together?  Doesn’t it grow better if you break open that big pile of crisscrossed roots?  Well, that is how I felt.  We needed to stretch our own roots where the sun’s (Son’s) work could produce even bigger blooms.   Our roots needed new soil and now we have it.   God is faithful in all things.

Bloom where you are planted.

Now, though many local people refer to our farm as my husband’s (you know — his house, his farm, his cows, his corn maze) — I know that at almost 22 years of marriage, this is my home – my farm, my cows, my seasonal business as well.  We are ONE and I feel ownership as well.  I am blooming and I am still in the same place.  Not because the people have changed (and not because we have moved), but because the young girl, full of rejection — suffocating from so much control — has matured, has healed, has grown.  My dear husband has found his own voice and has grown.  His roots found fresh soil to stretch in as well.

So my advice to any young woman who feels like I once did:  Totally lean on God.  He has a plan and He can make something beautiful out of the difficult seasons.   The years will pass and you will look back and smile at what God has done.  He is faithful!

If you are in a church or any other organization and see someone new — do the mature thing and try to help that person feel welcomed and appreciated.  That gift is lacking in many places. 

1 Corinthians 1:9
God, who has called you into fellowship with his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, is faithful.