Bloom Where You Are Planted

How many times have you heard those words--"bloom where you are planted"? Counting the times I have heard them, read them, or seen them would be useless as the numbers would just keep climbing.

Today I decided I would try to plant the rest of the flowers in the front of the house. I have 180 small Impatiens plants, white, lavender, and pink calling my name. With a cast on the leg, a knee that got whammed at the same time as I hurt the ankle, crazy me thought I could do it. How far did I get? There are now 36 impatiens planted in the front. What does this have to do with blooming where you are planted?

Have you ever seen the flats of flowers at Lowes, Wal Mart or even HEB? These plants look so small and pathetic and you wonder what will they become. After my tedious planting job this morning, a light went on in my head (yes, it is usually turned off up there in my brain). As the plants were planted and I moved further along, I noticed that the plants now looked much bigger than when they were squashed in with all the other plants in the flats. Their leaves were stretched out and the tiny little buds have already opened into flowers.

You see, they have bloomed where they were planted. Aren't we like these plants? I know I am (although I am still trying to totally bloom). When we have ourselves tightly squeezed in with the rest of the world, on this path we call life, we can't move along that path too quickly, we can't spread our wings and we can't spread out and take a chance on trying something new which will lead us to whom we are to become. Sometimes we do have to take a chance, that's where faith comes in; just like these plants that now have faith that if they spread out their leaves, take up the space that they now have been given, soak up the water through their roots, they can become more than just a little tiny plant amongst the rest of the batch. And to know what they can become once their roots are firmly planted--another lesson for us to learn.

I know for myself that faith is an action word. We have to do something in order to have that faith grow and blossom. Just like those plants, I pray that someday I can have enough faith to take a chance and to really spread out my leaves and bloom where I have been planted.