Plant A Buddy Today!!
Roots In Need Of Replanting and Water From The Well
I mentioned in a video on my YouTube channel that I would talk about “the plant” and I wanted to share this because it is my hope that you will come to a point in your life where you will discover that you are as interconnected as I am. I am not special, I am just more aware than most.
I am writing this post as a teaching tool for you “newbies” (said with nothing but love) who understand our interconnected nature with our Creator but don’t yet see it in your own lives or you are curious about my stories and you want to know more. I am sharing this particular story because it points the most clearly to our Creator and silences questions about the value of salvation through our savior, Christ Jesus. I won’t be preaching in this post, I will be walking it out for you, step by step.
I live near a college campus and every year as students come back to classes, the college offers various events to bring the kids together to form a community. My husband, Dan and I always read the signage and discuss how fun it would be to get to do some of the things that are offered. My most favorite event for 3 years now has been the “Plant A Buddy” event. My best understanding of this event is that you get to gather together and choose from a wide selection of plants and you get to hang out with people while you give your chosen plant a new home. For whatever reason, this is the event I wanted to attend.
I want to plant a buddy!!!
Alas, I am no longer a college student so the idea of having a plant buddy has been a pipe dream so I have settled into living vicariously through anyone blessed enough to get to participate in this event.
Then this summer happened.
If you’ve been on my channel and been a subscriber here, you know I’ve been struggling for a while. This summer the struggle became the deepest and darkest that I have experienced in years. I felt myself drifting from much of what I used to anchor myself to including my heavy dedication to my faith and my Bible studies. My prayer life remained prolific but my personal sense of God’s presence in my life was waning more and more as Summer moved towards Fall.
As the anniversary of my baptism approached, I began to feel a sense of shame that I had let my Father in Heaven down because I wasn’t easily “pulling myself up by my bootstraps” and getting on with living life in a faithful, obedient manner like I had prior to my decline. The further I fell into darkness and pain, the more my sense of personal shame mushroomed and I prayed for restoration and healing from the grief and anger I was moving through and settling into in many ways.
As September 1st approached, my baptism anniversary, my morning walks were less and less in the Spirit and more and more just a chore. I lamented my encroaching demise but continued my prayers. Surely God wasn’t going to forsake me and leave me here in this place.
The kids returned to college and the “Plant A Buddy” sign went up and I stood and read it and wanted a Buddy to plant. Then, just a couple of days before my baptism anniversary, I emerged from the east side of campus, chatted with my favorite administrator, Fawn, and then took two steps and noticed something sitting by a tree next to the sidewalk. It was out of place and odd looking. I walked over to it and discovered that it was none other than
an abandoned “plant a buddy”!!
“Oh poor guy, some uncaring college kid dumped you by the tree in pursuit of other amusements and left you here all alone by this tree! Do not despair, my little orphan plant, I will take you home and nurture you back to life!!”
Yes, I talked to that plant and yes, I was so overjoyed that I finally had my very own “plant a buddy” and I vowed right there and then to give him a good home and love him forever.
Then I carried him a few more steps and found a wadded up piece of paper laying on the sidewalk and I was called to pick it up so I did and I shoved it in my pocket and we headed home. All I could think about was finding the proper container to put my new buddy in. He needed a good home because not only had he been abandoned but his roots weren’t even fully planted in the soil and on top of that, the soil was dry and the tips of his leaves were curling up. It was amazing he wasn’t completely dead.
Later that morning I found a container and I gave him fresh soil, water, a new home in the windowsill and love.
Then I remembered the waded up piece of paper and I went in and dug it out of my walking pant’s pocket and flattened it out and here is what it was:
I could not believe what I was seeing. Here I was just a couple of days before my baptism anniversary having found this poor plant with some of its roots disengaged from its solid ground and here was a brochure from my local Baptist church talking about the value of salvation through Christ Jesus! I ran back to my plant a buddy holding this brochure and I began talking with God:
“I get it! I see it! I know what You’re trying to say to me! My roots, connected to You, were being loosened, I wasn’t drinking enough of the water from Your well and I was dying! I get it! You’re so right! I was dying and I had lost my way somehow during the summer and now You have given me a special buddy to re-plant, water and nurture!
My new buddy is me!!!!!”
I get it! Oh thank you! Thank you so much Heavenly Father for your never ending grace and mercy and your now very apparent unconditional love!!”
I was in awe of what our Creator had done for me, a child who was becoming lost in the darkness and the shame perpetrated by the enemy trying to convince me I wasn’t worthy of God’s love or grace. I was breathless and grateful and immediately I knew I had to make some changes in how I was living my life.
I tell you this story for myriad reasons. I’m not a preacher but I am a teacher in many ways and in equally many ways, I am reluctant in my status as said teacher. More than anything, what I want you to take from what you have read today is the following:
I am imperfect. I was deeply damaged from abuse by the enemy my entire life. My connection to God had been assaulted over and over to the point at which I didn’t believe He loved me or that I could ever go to Heaven. Nearly my whole life was spent believing what the enemy had told me and here I was in the Summer of Darkness and I was dumbfounded that I repeatedly found myself in the same place I lived in when I was younger. The darkness was becoming my home again, the lies were becoming the truth again and I was losing my way in nearly every way.
I clung to my Savior through my prayer life and I trusted the voice of the Holy Spirit (who speaks only love, by the way) and just two days before my baptism anniversary my pipe dream of having my very own “plant a buddy” came true. I didn’t believe I could participate in the “plant a buddy” event because I’m 52, not a college student and therefore not worthy of getting to do such a thing but what I definitely was is a woman always listening to the Holy Spirit and obediently following His voice and on that day He directed me to an abandoned “plant a buddy” and a seeming piece of garbage on the sidewalk in front of me and both things led to a massive revelation that altered my entire trajectory.
He speaks to us all the time. His love is around us all the time. I’m not saying every waded up piece of paper on the sidewalk is the revelation you are looking for in your life but what I am saying is that He is speaking to you always and He is always finding a way to direct your steps in the direction that is for your good. His plan isn’t always that you know no darkness and pain rather that darkness and pain is His tool He is using to show you a picture far bigger and more intricate than you can imagine. His ways are miracles and His ways include a withered plant, a scrap of paper or anything you can imagine
and beyond.
It is faith that will bring you to this point.
It is trust in God.
It is salvation through Jesus Christ.
It is a strong prayer life.
It is an understanding that the answer to those prayers will often look nothing like what you imagine when you hit your knees and start asking for what your finite mind can dream up.
He is listening.
Even in your darkest place.
4 Now he had to go through Samaria. 5 So he came to a town in Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of ground Jacob had given to his son Joseph. 6 Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about noon.
7 When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, “Will you give me a drink?” 8 (His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.)
9 The Samaritan woman said to him, “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?” (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.)
10 Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.”
11 “Sir,” the woman said, “you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? 12 Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his livestock?”
13 Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, 14 but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”
15 The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.”
John 4:4-15
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You can read about it here and I’d love it if you’d subscribe to that as well.
Thank you.
Oh how I needed to read this today. Thank you 😊
His teachings and signs are all around us ✝️