I like to keep a lot of flowers and plants around my apartment because they remind me of growth. I am in a season right now where a lot of big changes are about to happen in my life. In two months, I will be graduating from college and moving back to my hometown before I start graduate school and begin the first honest steps of my journey to medical school. As I finish up school, I can’t help but to reflect on the things I have learned and the woman I am becoming because of it.
Lately the concept of growth has been on my mind. I have been noticing that I just move a little differently than I had before. In other words, some things just aren’t the same. A lot of things have become less important to me than I originally thought they would be while other things have shifted into my front mirror. Though I could tell this was God’s way of telling me that He is trying to prepare me for something I couldn’t even dare to dream of, I still wanted to resist.
I wanted to stay with what I knew, with who I knew, with where I knew.
Tonight I read Ephesians 4:17-23 and it reads as the following:
17 So I tell you this, and insist on it in the Lord, that you must no longer live as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their thinking. 18 They are darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardening of their hearts. 19 Having lost all sensitivity, they have given themselves over to sensuality so as to indulge in every kind of impurity, and they are full of greed.
20 That, however, is not the way of life you learned 21 when you heard about Christ and were taught in him in accordance with the truth that is in Jesus. 22 You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; 23 to be made new in the attitude of your minds; 24 and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.
I realized that I am moving differently for a reason. There has become a distinct switch in the things I used to do and what I do now. Though I was wanting to resist, and sometimes still do, against this change because I kept wanting to find that comfort I had in the past, a habit I know too well, I am realizing that remaining in that comfort means no growth.
When a plant is first being planted into a pot, it is nurtured and fed until it reaches a point where it has to move to a bigger pot for it to continue its growth. The small pot environment can no longer sufficiently support the future growth of that plant because it has done all the growing that it can do there.
Today I just want you to know, it might be time to realize that you are being prepared to switch pots. You are moving differently for a reason because you are not your old self anymore, love.
Trust your God, not your plan.
