Dig and Bloom…

It was a rainy afternoon. Sitting under a warm blanket, bible, notebooks, and prayer journals falling off my lap, I cupped my hot tea in my hands.

From time to time, I like to revisit old prayer journals. I picked up one from a dusty shelf that was from the Summer of 2013.

As I read page after page, I sat in amazement of how simple those old journals were.

My heart was all over the pages, but the times seem to be different then.

I giggled as I came across an entry that said, “Father, please help me to be better at small talk. Help me to enjoy conversations and to be interested in others and to also be interesting! Help me to have a fun personality and easy to know. Lord, let me never stray from who I am, but adhere to being Christ Like.”

At the time, I was leading a Shine girls small group at my church. I did not feel equipped one single bit. I had only started reading the bible a year before in 2012.

Through the sweetest Grace and Mercy of Jesus, the new Shine blog was growing and growing and I was growing and growing right along with it. I was as green as an unripe banana.

I was desperate to follow His lead, but shaking in my size 8 sandals with each baby step.

As I look back over those years, I see so clearly the foundation being laid. My children were much smaller. Our lives were very busy with school, practices, church events, PTO meetings, carpool after carpool…

Almost every passage was the cry of my heart for God to help me be more organized!

Boy, seasons change, don’t they?

My prayer journal looks much different now. If the handwriting were not the same, it would be hard to believe the author was the same person.

Looking back, it seems like life was so much more simple. My prayer requests were just very basic and mostly about me and my personality. Haha.

However, those years were not simple in the moment. I often felt stressed, and rushed, and unequipped with a capital U.

Anxiety was a constant monster to battle. In those years, I had notecards throughout my entire house with every scripture in God’s Word about fear.

God is Faithful.

Those years are precious to me.

The growth. The heartache. The lessons learned and wisdom gained, I would not replace for anything.

As I settle into the hard parts of this season of life, I think about how different my life will look when I sit down on my couch 9 years from now and read today’s prayer journal entries.

I will probably smile and giggle at some of the passages just as I am doing now as I read from 2013.

Perspective changes everything, doesn’t it?

No matter the season you are in, settle in.

Dig. Bloom. Dig. Bloom. Dig. Bloom.

It is a constant cycle of digging deep into the present and waiting, often long hours and long days and long years for the bloom.

The bloom eventually comes.

If I could take you through the pages of my old prayer journals, you would see the digging parts of my story. The hard, dirty, raw, vulnerable parts that had to happen before the bloom would come.

I do not have a green thumb, just ask my mother-in-love. But, I do know that soil needs rain. And often much rain for the seed to grow and bloom.

Sometimes, what seems like stormy rain, actually when looking back, looks more like a fresh spring watering.

I see it in my prayer journal over and over.

I will see it once again years from now when I look back on these days.

I have said it once and I will say it again..

Enjoy where you are. Be present. Be all there. Settle in. Dig in.

Seasons do not last forever.

They eventually change.

And, many parts of your current season, you may even miss one day.

Ask me how I know.

rain brings the blooms,

jill

Ecclesiastes 3:

There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens:

a time to be born and a time to die,
    a time to plant and a time to uproot,

 a time to kill and a time to heal,
    a time to tear down and a time to build,
    a time to weep and a time to laugh,
    a time to mourn and a time to dance,
    a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
    a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,
    a time to search and a time to give up,
    a time to keep and a time to throw away,
    a time to tear and a time to mend,
    a time to be silent and a time to speak,
    a time to love and a time to hate,
    a time for war and a time for peace.