I do not remember much else from that letter, but my nearly thirteen-year-old heart needed those words.
"Bloom where you are planted, Lindsey."
The angst of becoming a teenager is experienced by every human being. Add on top of that being a belongs-to-no-culture-for-reals missionary kid, and the evolution to adolescence feels more like being trapped in a magician's death chamber than a whole new world of possibilities.
For years, I had dreaded the transitions, saying goodbye, living far away, being different from people in both cultures, but somehow, when all the facts-of-life hormones began to surge, the distinctions felt insurmountable.
I wanted to be normal.
Like other American kids.
I tired of being incompatible with the world around me.
I cried and railed against this planet that was my life.
Why me?
Why our family?
Why God?
Why did I have to be so DIFFERENT?
Why did I have to be so weird?
And then my youth pastor uncle sent me this letter to remind me that I was not forgotten by God. This was not haphazard. I was not just a side effect of my parents' calling. There was purpose for me here in this place too. A place where I could bloom, in this season, into the woman God was calling me to be, one day.
Sitting on that concrete balcony overlooking my Caribbean mountains through the black railing protecting the 3 story drop, I breathed those words into my soul.
"Bloom where you are planted."
It would not eliminate the whys from my mouth.
But it would give me a mantra that I would repeat over and over again for the rest of my life.
"Bloom where you are planted."
"Bloom where YOU are planted."
Bloom, girl, bloom....
Do you remember the first lesson you had
in being fully there in your life?
What was it? How old where you?
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