Bloom Where You Are Planted

So I have been talking to the Lord a little lately... actually ALOT lately about several things...

What to do about the business?  What house to build and when to build it?  What to do about Jude's therapy and development?  To put AL in PDO or preschool or do homeschool until kindergarten?  How to be a happy, encouraging, and adoring wife and mother? Should we have more children and when should it happen?

Instead of a designated prayer time, I have more like an all day ongoing conversation with Him.

Well yesterday during one of our "conversations" about home building, I walked away with an answer.

Love the home you are in.

Surprisingly, I was not flooded by disappointment with this.  Instead, I went to the Word to find affirmation of this.  

Most of us know the scripture from Jeremiah 29:11 like the back of our hand. It's one of our "staple scriptures" to cling to when life isn't exactly going the way we planned.  But according to my Aunt Jo Ann, knowing a scripture is like being tossed a life saver during a storm, but knowing the word and the context of that scripture is like being in a boat.  (I am completely paraphrasing from a speech she gave during a ladies' ministry that I didn't have the pleasure of hearing in person, but was told all about later from my mother-in-law.)

With all that is being said, it is so enlightening to know the context behind our beloved scripture, Jeremiah 29:11.  In Jeremiah 29, the prophet Jeremiah wrote a letter to the exiles from Jerusalem.  

Imagine the despair: you were royalty in your homeland, and you and your family were forced into exile in a strange land, Babylon.  They were just waiting on the Lord to tell them what to do next or improve their current situation.  They were waiting for things to get better; WAITING TO LIVE THEIR LIVES!

Instead, through Jeremiah, the Lord tells them, 
"Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Marry and have sons and daughters; find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, so that they too may have sons and daughters.  Increase in number there; do not decrease.  Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile.  Pray to the Lord for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper." 
Jeremiah 29:5-7

I don't want to wait to live my life.  I don't want to wait for things to happen.  I'm not going to go through day to day saying, "when the house gets built, we will....", "when the children are older, we will...", "when we have more money, we will...", or "when things slow down, we will".

I just love themes.  Every party and event needs one, in my opinion, and it just drives my husband insane.  But it's who I am- NO APOLOGIES.  So...  I'm going to set myself a little theme of my own; a theme I want to start living by today:

Bloom where you are planted. 

Right now my husband and I are planted in a small house, in a small town, with two small children, on a small income.  And I am going to enjoy every bit of it.

I'm going to invite that couple over for dinner, not matter how small and unimpressive my house is.  I'm going to take a vacation, no matter how small my budget is.  I am going to enjoy potty training my daughter and teaching my five year old to walk!!  I am going to enjoy cleaning the house, doing the laundry, and bathing the babies.  I am going to keep fixing up my home and making it pretty until the day our new home is built.  I am going to bake the cake that no one should eat because they are watching their figure.  I am going to love my husband through every stressful moment.   

I am going to "bloom where I am planted."  And I am planted in the Lord and where He has me in life right now.

Sure this is not where I grew up or where I had dreamed of living forever, but I am making friends and memories that will last a life time.  I am going to make the most out of every season in this life starting with the season I am in.