Years of being a spiritual nomad seem so foreign to me now.
People are walking this earth who are blessed with the skill of breathing life into landscaping. Some have elaborate rose gardens, or perhaps a trellis overgrown with greenery and fragrant blooms. In the distance, I'm sure there's a bubbly fountain and plenty of bumblebees hopping from petal to petal.
I am not that person and I never will be.
I can keep a house plant alive and that's about it. My sweet husband attempts to plant flowers on our front porch regularly, and within a season, they're all dead. I am the angel of death to any type of greenery. Apparently if you don't water things, they die. Who knew?
Growing up, my mother, my aunts, my grandparents, they all tended to their yards with love and care. On the side of our house, my mom grew the most magnificent peonies, which are still my favorite flowers to this day. But when I left home for college, I found myself living a nomadic existence that I've only ceased in the last two years.
I could justify my lack of zeal for landscaping in a variety of ways: I lived in an apartment. I was never home. I hate being outside. I commuted a great distance to and from work. I'm a mosquito buffet.
But in the end, it was just a lack of desire. I'm the type of person who likes to see instant results. If an eye cream doesn't make me look 10 years younger in the first 24 hours, I'll most likely stop using it completely and I'll move on to the next.
The same can be said about how I tended to the relationships around me.
I realized this was a problem for others a few years back during a random Kroger run before a snowstorm. Yes, I am that person out buying milk, bread, and eggs before the threat of inclement weather. You can judge me, but what better time to enjoy French toast?!?!
I was standing in the bread aisle, getting irrationally annoyed with two chatting ladies when a rogue cart came out of nowhere, t-boning mine. I jumped and squealed, unaccustomed to such vehicular carnage on aisle five.
I looked up to see my favorite coworker, very annoyed. "You have passed me three times without saying hello. That's rude." she bellowed, the line between her brows growing more intense.
As I launched into my sincerest apologies, something struck me. I had lived in Bardstown for almost nine years. I SHOULD know people. I just chose not to know people. In the blink of an eye my entire existence became embarrassing. This was my home, and I was intentionally turning on my social autopilot in public, conditioned from years of being able to fly under the radar in the bread aisle.
And I could justify that. We commuted long distances to and from work. We were never home. We were making plans to move 45 minutes away to Elizabethtown, the city my husband had been working since college. In my mind, I figured it was too late to have any relationships take root. We had one foot out the door, and there was no point in investing time into people, only to leave them in the next year.
I told my husband about this epiphany as I unpacked the blizzard provisions when I got home. "We should meet people, and we should make friends," I surmised. My husband, the most charming and sociable person on the planet agreed. So we sat about doing that. We had been recently attending a neighbor's Bible study group, and had already become friendly with several of the families. On Saturday nights, we set out in a little caravan from Bardstown to the church in Louisville and enjoyed dinner after the service.
We were getting to know people! And they liked us! (at least they tolerated us).
We were thrilled to learn that our church, Southeast Christian, was planning to open a satellite campus in Elizabethtown. It's like God heard my heart's desire and already had a plan!
We began going to informal Elizabethtown gatherings. We got to know people. And they liked us too! This whole transformation would not have happened without God's intervention.
As the time for our campus to open grew closer, things got real. And scary. At the time, my daily devotions kept focusing on growth. Unaccustomed to the patience required to understand what God was trying to teach me, I casually nodded and agreed with whatever I was supposed to get from these writers. But God kept pointing me back to the book of Mark.
I love this particular parable, because wasn't that quintessential Jesus? Dumbing it down for all of us goobers who were so dense we didn't get the first time?
In Mark 4, He's talking about how a batch of seeds falls on rocky ground and they sprout up quickly. But at the first glimpse of tough times, they wither away. Whoa.
Can we talk about a better metaphor for my nomadic existence? So many times I've claimed to be a follower of Christ, and boom, something crazy happens and I immediately retreat to my old ways. I become a hermit. I focus only on me.
Turns out, God had a plan for me all along. And it came in the form of a tree. YES. Are you serious God? Really? A tree? YES.
Brian and I were asked to adopt a tree in the parking lot before our church opened. Ok, wait. You guys realize I kill 90% of vegetation in which I come into contact? You want me to adopt a tree that's supposed to enhance the friendliness of our parking lot? Hard pass.
Nope, God knew I needed this test. He knew I wanted to plant some roots, and he was intent on those roots reaching deep into this community.
Every day we made sure our tree had the necessary gallons of water it needed to take root in its new home. We checked to be sure the gator bag was sealed and secure so the record-breaking heatwave wouldn't let the water evaporate out. Things got dicey when someone stole our water jugs. So we used some of our neighbors' jugs and refilled them before we left so their tree could drink up as well.
We spent more time with that tree in a year than I've ever spent tending to another living being in my entire life. As the months passed, the metaphor God was showing me finally started to bloom.
For years, we lived like spiritual nomads, going from place to place, not feeding our spirits, not growing. We just existed. We were seeds planted in rocky soil. Sure we'd flourish for a little, but we didn't have deep roots to hold us firmly in place. When the winds of change came, we'd let them carry us to a new place, and we'd start all over again. To grow, we have to commit to putting down roots. The people may not be like us, the soil may not like the soil in which we thrived in the past, but we have to bloom where we're planted. Or transplanted in this case.
Watering and caring for that tree was one of the most profound things I've experienced in my adult life. It taught me discipline, but mostly, it taught me about the big picture God sees whenever he's placed a mustard seed dream in my heart.
There's no such thing as instant results. Eye creams don't deliver results overnight. And relationships don't grow because of a friendly hello once in a while. You have to nurture those things from tiny seeds. You have to commit to letting them thrive and to feed them with love and light.
The story of our transformation is so special to me because our roots have intersected and combined with others with similar stories. We've met so many people in the last two years by serving in our church, these people aren't merely friends, they're family to us. They're a part of our family tree now. They've been in our home. They have keys to our home.
They know to call before they come over because I'm probably not wearing pants. (and yes, several have sent me the welcome mat that says that!).
On Tuesday, I asked Brian if I could take his picture with our tree after our Bible study. I imagined how I could decorate it for this Christmas, And for a second, I thought about introducing my grandchildren to it one day, hoping by then it would be tall and sturdy enough for a tire swing.
Because for us, we've finally put down roots.
Thanks for reading!
~ Christy
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