Thursday, November 19, 2020

“Every flower that ever bloomed had to go through a whole lot of dirt to get there”

 

I had engaged in fierce battles with myself, Lomalinda, and God, so it took me a while to recognize it, but finally it sunk in: If I wanted to transition out of culture shock and settle in well at Lomalinda, I’d have to change my perspective.

 

I’d have to notice the good that was going on around me and my family.

 

The kids, Matt and Karen, had met friends and enjoyed playing with them. Matt was especially enjoying adventures the neighbor boy, Glenny, was taking him on—like throwing rocks at bulls wandering through the neighborhood and fishing for piranhas and chasing giant cockroaches. And playing with boa constrictors.

 

Lomalinda’s birdsongs sounded different from the ones I’d enjoyed back home, but I decided to find the beauty in them. And my kids had parrots living in their yard! Parrots! That would never have happened back home in Seattle.

 

On one of our first days in Lomalinda, Ron and Lois Metzger introduced themselves and invited us to dinner. Their yard teemed with tropical plants and flowers, including orchids. Orchids! And Glenny’s big brother Tommy grew orchids in a special shed he rigged up. Dozens of other brightly colored flowers grew all around Lomalinda. Even though they weren’t familiar to me—like bougainvillea—I began to notice their intense beauty.

 

During our first two weeks, we received a dozen dinner invitations from our new colleagues. They lavished their welcomes on us.

 

We soon learned that hosting friends for meals was the most common way people entertained themselves. We had no televisions or movie theater, and the world then knew nothing of videos, VCRs, the Internet, PCs, laptops, iPads, or cell phones. Many folks played table games and read books in the evenings, but the most popular social pastime was enjoying dinner with other families.

 

Long before we landed in Lomalinda, her people figured out the importance of connecting. “Much more happens at a meal than satisfying hunger and quenching thirst,” Henri Nouwen wrote. “Around the table we become family, friends, and community, yes, a body.” (Bread for the Journey)

 

Lomalinda’s people got it—we needed each other. Though I didn’t yet recognize it, I had arrived at a God-scheduled appointment. He wanted me to see the community as His hands and feet. He wanted me to look into their eyes and see His. When a family invited us to join them at their dinner table, He wanted me to see them feeding His lambs.

 

God and Lomalinda’s people heaped upon us one blessing after another after another. Life was going to be good there.

 

I would have to extend grace to myself, though, because I would make progress in fits and starts. Some days I took one step forward and two steps back.

 

But like Barbara Johnson said, “If things are tough, remember that every flower that ever bloomed had to go through a whole lot of dirt to get there.” 

 

Yes, I’d have to go through a lot of “dirt”—doubts, difficult transitions, tears, homesickness, despair—before I could bloom where I was planted.

 

But I did bloom, eventually. 

I did bloom where I was planted!

 

Barbara continues:

 

The Almighty Father will use life’s reverses to move you forward.”

 

And He did.

What seemed like reverses turned out to be tools God used to move me forward and upward.

 



 

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