Get the Truck...

If I am being honest, I feel like I always enjoy leaving my options open and having one foot out the door. I am torn between a desire for stability and untethered freedom. When it comes to organizational commitments of more than a year or so, that seems restrictive. I have said no to things with three year commitments because I thought I might be long gone by then. Yet it has been eight years of being in the same place now with that mentality. 

So about two years ago, I felt God saying, stop always looking for the way out, and put down some roots. Settle a bit. Get involved in things and commit some time- give it five years. I needed the idea of giving it a certain period of time to settle those mental blocks, and two years in I can see how healthy it is to really put down some roots and get involved in things. Even if for only a short time. Going through cycles and ups and downs is healthy and it is the real world.

But now this thing has happened, and it has not been five years but I am feeling the pull that it actually might be time to go. It is quite different from the previous avoidance maneuvers to keep my options open as I now have places, people, and events I enjoy and do not want to leave. The pandemic has helped bring those things to good breaking points in a lot of ways though.

The perfect image of this process was presented by my neighbor the other day. He recently had to pull some bushes out in the front yard and saw a fellow neighbor struggling to do the same thing. If you know anything about bushes and growing them- you plant them so their roots can get established. Once those are established, assuming you picked an appropriate plant for your climate and location, the bush will grow and flourish. With some occasional pruning and watering as needed, etc. It will be hard to take out because it locks itself into the ground and grows large. However, it is really easy to remove a plant whose roots are not well established. There is nothing tying it down and it has not grown much. 

Now that my roots are established, leaving and the idea of being pulled from this ground seems exciting but more so terrifying and painful. What my neighbor says is you can't just pull it up anymore, you are going to need a shovel, a chain, and a four-wheel drive vehicle. You dig at the front of the bush with a shovel so there is space for it to move when you tie the chain around it and pull forward with the truck. For a plant you want to get rid of, cool, that sounds great and easy enough. But with that analogy of being uprooted to live on, it seems quite jolting. 

The cool thing is, in being planted and actually rooting, I have grown just like a bush does. I am more mature than I was. To trust the ultimate gardener as to where I need to be now to flourish and trust the uprooting process is a completely new journey. The pain seems scary but I am going to trust the one with the shovel, chain, and truck.

I want to add that sometimes you need to grow before its time to move. You need to be planted and grow in the skills and abilities you will need for when you are moved. It is a process because you need one before the other, so you need to be planted in order to be moved and replanted.