As a bonafide plant-lover, I have often thought about personal growth and how the Lord has set such clear needs and phases for botanical growth when we humans seem to have uncertainty engrained in our DNA. This simile annealed back in 2017 during a church internship. Part of the internship involved (what I think was) a whole day of deep study in the word. We started our morning with creating a "mini theology" (which I wasn't sure I got right back in the day, and I'm certain that is not the term I'd use for it now) based on a Psalm. We'd read the Psalm, then go through the following 4 questions:
What does this say about God?
What does it say about His people?
What does it say about those who are not His people?
How does this empower me to share the Gospel?
Our group of maybe 17 young adults would try to get every possible conclusion we could articulated and supported. This meant spending a lot of time working to state the obvious and suggest the abstract when it came to number one. Especially since we had to find as many supporting passages from the New Testament as we could to support each individual extrapolation we'd named out before we could move on to the second question.
In one of these Psalm-examination sessions, I recall a girl from the other campus (who we didn't see often) saying "[the passage indicates that] God is a gardener," to an annoying set of chortles from a table of young men behind her. I have often turned that interaction over and over in my head regretting not speaking up. In the moment, though, I knew to stay quiet lest I let my tongue run hot. And shortly after I saw the conversation move forward, I went back to the suggestion of God being a gardener and built upon the concept further.
Now that I've got the unnecessarily wordy intro to a simile I've mulled over for years, I want to articulate it as best I can.
The life of a plant, for the sake of this post, begins as a seed. As the seed takes on water it grows roots and gets a little stem. It cuts its teeth in the soil and begins to make some decisions: which way is up? Is the light this way? No, that way? Should we kick out some leaves now, which takes a lot of energy, to get MORE energy once our leaves can take in more of that photo-goodness we make into chlorophyll?
A lot of the human development in this germination stage can only be described as miraculous. As I watch my sister do a sweet, tender job parenting her two daughters and replay our childhoods superimposed onto their lives, I see the Lord's hand more clearly than I was ever aware. The way their brains are developing, the way they learn to animate new muscles in their face and translate new thoughts and feelings into full sentences. Obviously, I don't dismiss my sister's tireless efforts as their mother (nor my BIL his), but the consistency of the growth between the two different dear nieces highlights the handiwork of God's design of humanity.
Then, of course, a perennial plant enters into its first flowering season. There is a flurry of growth! There is pollen, there are flowers, there are new leaves! Maybe some thorns or some fruits. The smattering of new life attracts a whole ecosystem around it--maybe birds and bees, maybe slugs and moths.
Of course, it is in the flowering phase and into the seed-setting phase that the arduous efforts of the floral diapason start to demand a cost from the plant in exchange for its own efforts. As the flowers demand pollination, so the leaves demonstrate short-suffering of dehydration. Pieces of the plant start to wither in sacrifice for the greater good of the whole--those early leaves will no longer receive the same nutrients they once needed to thrive because there are now bigger, taller leaves that can better serve the plant higher up the stalk. The first fruits and flowers will begin to decay before reaching full potential as the plant directs energies elsewhere.
As the plant has to settle down and focus, so must we as we grow. In youth, we cannot pursue exceptional academic performance, swimming, music, friendships, tutoring, familial commitments, and emotional health. As we grow into teenagers the bandwidth might seem greater, but the rate of success for any of these is lower. Add in higher education, jobs, and regular adult responsibilities and it feels like we must focus on a few slim tasks a day to get anything done.
Our capacity to diligently focus on many areas narrows as our energy levels dwindle, the reality of life as an adult hits, and responsibilities mount. In this, we see pruning enter the simile. Whether by God or ourselves, things start to get removed from priority in our lives (and often will proceed to slowly die out from being present altogether). These things ultimately hinder the right type of growth the gardener desires.
I have found that the Lord has needed to prune much in my heart and my life. Ever the dreamer, I have had to let wayward visions of potential lives fall away from my mental escape options when life gets overwhelming. This dead-heading process is anything but painless, and my heart is sappier than a freshly cut fir. Parting with dreams and potential crushes me. Surrendering my dreams (which I tell myself are not my will, but truly, reflect what I'd like the Lord's will to be) is a daily battle. Some seasons I'm at war with this process more than others. There are days I still wax nostalgia about giving up dancing, days when I consider what my life would be like if I did certain things differently.
I was recently sharing a recipe from this site with a new friend, and scrolled through to see what exactly they might find should they be curious. Over the last few years, I know I have suffered from depression. I have been to counseling (though I've been on an unintended hiatus I keep intending to start back up), been in touch with a psychiatrist, shared with friends and family, increased my exercise, decreased my online time, tried to jump back into hobbies. But looking back on the last few years, it is clear that once I pushed past my hyper-productive denial when I started this site I have just been strumming along to the beat of the depression drum. The recipes are no longer photographed, the artist dates have stopped, the dreams have just ceased to be something I strive after. The whole reason I started this site was to start pursuing my dream of publishing a cook book one day!
When I try to consider how the wild flowers grow, how they do not twist or toil (Luke 12:27), I see I do just the opposite of that. I sometimes wonder if I've been trying to prune myself into a bonsai when the Lord has visions for me to be something altogether different (with my dramatic flair and impossible needs, I'd say I'm a white fusion calathea, and not just because it's my favorite).
Pruning, or dead heading--whichever you prefer, is so healthy for a plant to undergo. It isn't just that you get to shape the plant how you desire, but you actually influence the health and maturity of the plant. Pruning can encourage new, healthier growth for better blooms. It helps provide opportunities for new and fresh fruits. It can help when trying to create a new cultivar entirely.
The benefits of pruning come with nearly no cons. There are two downsides I've found to pruning, the first being the investment of the effort. Pruning takes time. Growing up, my mother had probably 2 dozen large knock-out rose bushes in our front yard. While they made her house the envy of the block (especially after her delicious peonies blushed in between bulb season and the rest of the street's florals), they produced so many flowers all at once. Of course, once the petals fell off and rained a hot pink blanket on the walkway, their naked hips would be left unshaded from the bright sun. I can recall many times meandering towards the rose bushes with a pair of scissors, hoping to tackle more than I'd ever wind up getting through, just looking to trim the buduncle when possible. Being knockout roses, this meant that the bud eyes could grow up and take the place of the old flower, setting off a wave of cyclical blooms throughout the summer. Of course, this also meant we had the arduous opportunity to deadhead every day.
The second downside to pruning? The recovery time. After taking shears to make, what one would hope was a clean, break the plant then looks naked. You can search it on whatever social media you'd like--people have equated pruning their plants to "cutting bangs the night before your wedding," because it looks astonishingly bare, naked, and like it is about to suffer if it hasn't already. The cut must callous over and the plant has to redirect itself--ok! no growth over here anymore, I guess. Send all the resources back to into the system! It could be weeks before you get a new blossom. Heck, I once repotted and trimmed my monstrously large monstera deliciosa and it took almost two years to push out a new leaf.
We don't get to control when we are growing. We don't get to control when the Lord is growing our heart spiritually, our mind, our ourselves in totality. We can put in effort (like time, rest, healing, supplemental instruction) but we don't always get to influence where those resources are directed within our growth. And sometimes, there is bad growth. But.. more on that for another time.
Now, though, I'm reflecting on growth as God designs it. In Genesis, we don't get a great detailed picture of how God deisgned room for growth prior to the fall. We know that He designed things in perfect harmony. We know that He designed the fall of man. We know that He orchestrated a wipeout-flood so he could deadhead basically the whole world and propogate a new one from a select bunch of "good" eggs (using that term rhetorically).
Recently, the church I have been attending has been thrust into a season of growth. Our senior preacher has been disqualified from ministry after serving in a dedicated position almost 3 years (keep in mind, the church is maybe 5 or 6 years old). We started meeting in a coffee shop on Sunday mornings and this man went from being an invited speaker to our lead preacher. We moved into a bigger building as his expository and exegetical preaching (along with his high-profile involvement in several other global ministries) drew people from Dallas and further to call this church their local church.
The decision was swift and the details of the disqualification were no more clear than Paul's guidance in 1 Timothy on qualifications for elders, leaders, and teachers. This news came in a clear, quick, and coordinated communication effort across channels.
The announcement sparked mistrust and "the ick" in my brain's history channel from my time at McLean Bible Church. I interned there in the summer of 2017, which doesn't need additional details now, but it did provide me a peripheral view to the dismissal of Lon Solomon and the church's decision to elect a new leader. It was certainly a formative time in my relationships with local churches, church leadership, and my trust with church leadership.
I know as we journey through this time there's a special blessing waiting to be discovered. The presence of wise and communicative elders who make quick, thoughtful decisions shows the strong foundation of our church community with effective leadership at its heart. I trust that the Lord will provide blessings in our church body as we press through and trust in Him during this time, strengthening our beliefs.
Additionally, this moment provides a chance for reflection and growth individually and for our community. We can encourage open and honest conversations, leading to deeper connections. These heartfelt discussions are crucial in fostering unity and solidarity, grounded in the timeless wisdom of Scriptures. Embracing this transformative phase, we're set to see the natural growth of our community, united by shared values and a joint dedication to spiritual development and mutual care.
God has a purpose and plan for everything, but growth is painful. It can lead to beautiful things, and I trust the Lord will, but that doesn't mean I know what sort of plant we are anymore. I'm hoping to just be a helpful and willing participant.
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