Green Thumbs

I've never owned a plant in my life, until my last birthday. When I turned 22 last March, my wonderful roommate Lindsay gave me a cute little potted ivy plant. I loved the gift--I like ivy, and Lindsay's plants had added a certain degree of "homey-ness" to our room all year long. (Lindsay has two green thumbs, along with a lot of other domestic skills I wish I had, such as cooking, sewing, decorating, etc., etc.) Anyway, she promised me that my new ivy plant would be hard to kill :) And in my birthday card, she wrote that she liked plants because they remind her of spiritual growth (she also reassured me that if my plant did die, not to worry--at that point it was no longer a symbol of my spiritual growth).

Six months later, my ivy is still alive--and has grown so much I need to repot it (though, seeing as how I don't even own any potting soil, I have still not done so). Earlier this summer, I hadn't really noticed that it had grown at all. But lately I'm noticing just how much bigger it is. And then I realized that Linds was right...it's a good metaphor for my spiritual growth this summer.

By mid-summer, I really didn't feel like I had done much growing. I'd maybe learned a lesson here or there, but nothing earth-shattering. I was ashamed to feel kind of stagnant--if someone had asked me, "What's God been teaching you lately?", I probably would have felt kind of sheepish and fished for an acceptable answer. But now that I'm reflecting on my summer, I realize just how much God has done in me over the last few months. I'm in a good place right now, and I'm excited about what He has in store. Slowly but surely, like my little ivy plant, He's growing me into something beautiful. Perhaps not profoundly signficant in the world's eyes, but noticed by Him--beautiful and important to Him--and able to be used by Him.