Grow the Way I Want You to Grow!
I had asked a great friend to mentor me years back, and thankfully she said yes. One question she asked in the beginning was what I wanted the times we met to look like. I had no idea what she meant until she started giving examples. Did I want to go over Scripture? Did I want accountability with anything specifically? Then she said, ‘Or we can just meet and talk together. Praying for whatever needs prayer at that time.’ Yes, the last one. I didn’t need another item to check off at that time with my hands full of young kids. I may have cried at the thought of just getting to talk and process life out loud to someone who would help me lift my prayers to God. What a gift from God she was to me during those years. She is overseas now, but I hear her British accent in my head quite often!
When we were moving, she gave me a plant. To most, it would not be much to look at, but I held it like I had been given gold. Because I knew the story. She had started the original plant from a little piece of stem bought in an airport while in Hawaii. Now she had taken shoots off the side and given them to me. I was so excited! And the first thing I wanted the plant to do was grow faster! It took forever. I thought maybe I should separate the shoots into different planters. She said not yet, they grow best together like that. So I watered it and sometimes forgot about it, but felt frustrated it was not becoming much over the years. Then 4 years in, when I was having a hard day, I happened to look over and saw that it had bloomed! There were beautiful purple and white flowers coming off the stems. They had a sticky sap that dripped down and on that hard day it looked like tears. I was still in disbelief that my plant finally had flowers.
What triggered these memories is when I looked over recently and saw my new shoots I was planting to make into another plant. They had been short and straight when I planted them. But now they were all over the place, scraggly looking at best. They seemed to be taking awhile to grow. Sound familiar? I walked over and tried to straighten them. But they of course settled back to the their natural bent. Then I realized, mentoring and caring for others is like this as well. We want neat and orderly. We want quick growth and we want it now. We want everyone to see how amazing God is, the exact way we did. But the truth is that friendships and sharing life is messy. We all need to be nourished and loved where we are. And just like plants, we may think no changes are happening in the people we love and care about. And then after time, patience, “son”light, living water, and love… they bloom!
I realized we do that to God also. We wonder why we don’t have the beautiful flowers we had expected, why the growth is so slow, why our life isn’t as neat as the stories we heard. There will be times when we think the best idea is to do life alone, but like my friend advised, ‘they grow best close together’ And I think that would be the counsel of our heavenly Father as well.
Colossians 3:12-14
12 Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. 13 Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. 14 And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.
God, thank you for your patience with us! Thank you for creating us to be better together. And thank you that we do not all grow at the same speed or look the same! Help us to be patient with each other and to never underestimate Your love for us.
Lisa Riddle
