I find myself in a rut these days, when it comes to all of the things I once felt so called to:

• Writing (!!!!)
• Entrepreneurship
• Community Building

What once felt so easy and so comfortable for me suddenly feels challenging.

In an attempt to be kinder to myself and refrain from negative self criticism, I’ve been likening this chapter to the journey of a plant. Now, I’m no expert in horticulture (at all!) but my basic kindergarten-level gardening experience is pretty confident that in order for something to grow, the following steps must be taken:

1. Good soil
2. Plant your seed
3. Water and nutrients
4. Cultivate the land
5. Bloom.

So maybe I mixed up my steps – you get the idea.

When I sit in, particularly, my writing rut lately, I travel back to the last few years to try and pinpoint where I got my confidence to leap so boldly. This image of a flower’s journey pops into my mind every time.

2017-2018 were the finding good soil years, and 2019 was the year of planting. 2020 was the year of watering and feeding. And 2021 was the year of cultivation and tending to the ground. But just in between steps 4 and 5 above, there’s a little caveat. There’s a part of the process where the stem has to break through all the dirt in order to burst through the other side and prepare itself to fully bloom.

I got frustrated this morning trying to form my thoughts into complete sentences so I hopped back into a message from last week that I’d paused. I pressed play and heard the pastor shout (almost as if God, from Heaven, strolled into my bedroom and bellowed) “Resist the urge to get stuck in confusion. Move, confused. Say yes, confused. If you wait for clarity, you might miss the anointing of the command.”

I don’t know how God’s going to use me once I push through this dirt.

I don’t even know why He picked ME.

But the more I move, the more I obey, the more I give Him my yes, the more I feel like me. And I guess I just want more of that feeling.

Perhaps my rut is tied to confusion, and me trying so hard to make sense of things that never will. Me trying so hard to please people I’ll never please, or connect with people that aren’t meant to hear what I have to say. Maybe I’m trying to build something that God has different plans for, or maybe this IS His plan and it’s just so damn big that my little human brain just can’t fathom it to be in my story.

Whatever it is, it’s big. I feel it.

The layer of dirt seems endless.

Which means the roots are pretty far down.

And that can only mean one thing: 

THIS BABY’S GETTING READY TO BLOOM TALL AND WIDE.