When I bought my first house, my Mom bought me a Dark Eyes Fuchsia. It was gorgeous! Take a moment to go and look it up if you don’t know what it looks like. It hung by my front door and swung ever so slightly in the wind. A robin made a nest in it and I waited and watched until the babies hatched. So much life came from that little hanging basket of cascading flowers. It filled me with joy, giving so much beauty to my front door.
There was a problem, though. The weather was not kind to that precious plant. The heat of Tennessee became too much for it and it withered. There was no way to care for it. No combination of sun and water was going to help it to thrive. It could not consistently bloom where it was planted. It wasn’t possible.
When we arrived in St. Andrews, I was welcomed with hundreds of different types of fuchsia plants. You can’t help but notice them as they fall bountifully over stone walls and adorn beautiful gardens. They come in all different shades of purples and pinks. Every time I pass one, I think about that beautiful basket next to my first front door.
That house was the first place that I owned. It was the home that I created. There, I hosted parties and housed friends. I felt joy there. I felt lonely. I celebrated often. I cried and grieved in the safety of those walls. In the garden, I grew beautiful flowers, too many overgrown vegetables, and more blackberries than one can possibly eat in a season. I bloomed in that precious place, just like the fuchsia did for a time by my front door.
But, what if you can only bloom so far in some places? What if your blooming is beautiful but smaller and more contained where you are? That precious hanging plant bloomed beautifully and nurtured life. But, had it been here, how much more would it have bloomed? How much more life could it have nurtured?
I am blooming in Scotland…in ways that I never could back in the States. I don’t know what that means. And, I actually think it’s a bit odd. We have very few friends here and that is drastically different than back home. We haven’t hosted any locals to dinner. We have had friends who are visiting eat dinner with us, but that is quite different. And, hosting dinner used to be our jam. We don’t own a car. We walk everywhere. Our home is at least half the size (if not smaller) than the house we sold in Nashville. All of the closets in our house are not the size of the master closet in our old house. We spend so much more time outside and we all love it that way. I started wild swimming. We are all blooming here…in a place that we knew very little about before we moved. We are a bit like the fuchsia I think. Beautiful in any location. And, yet, more full and beautiful in a place where we were meant to be.
Let’s not forget this, however…wherever you are planted, you are still going to be you. A change of location will not change who you are. So, do your work. Do the rubble moving trauma work and then deepen more and more into who you were created to be. Yes. Do all of that. AND…think about whether or not where you are can continue to grow or fully allow the space for the person that you are. Some places might be for forever. Some might be for a season. Some may never be what you thought they would have been. So, become yourself. And, then allow yourself to ask questions about whether or not the place you are planted is where you would bloom the most.
May the place where you are blooming and the person you are becoming be beautifully paired…
Berrylin