Wilted Little Plant Revived

I rescued this little plant from Kroger this fall. It was a sad little thing. All the leaves were infected with brown leaf spot. My plant app said to cut off all infected leaves to keep it from spreading, but if I'd done that there wouldn't have been a plant left. So I trimmed the worst and left the healthiest three, then gave it lots of TLC. It's now growing new leaves daily and sending out runners. 

I was looking at it yesterday and it made me think of my own life. Not too many years ago I was just kindof drifting. Conner was finally starting to really well again and we were all still reeling a bit from him being so very sick for so long - and I knew I wanted to help people heal, but I wasn't sure how yet. We'd known for a while that where we were going to church wasn't where we were supposed to be anymore, but we'd been music leaders for so long - if we left there and quit doing that job - what in the world were we supposed to do with ourselves? My last supposed "best friend" relationship had ended poorly a couple of years before and while I had people I considered friends, we didn't talk much...and I was lonely. I was wilting and if I had been a plant with leaves, I'm pretty sure they all would have had brown spots. 

So then 2020.... the latter half. I completed my health coaching school and started down the road to the clinical doctorate in Integrative and Functional Nutrition that I'll complete this May. Sabrina got invited to Lifehouse Fellowship Church and really liked it, so we went to check it out and decided it felt like home. 

We've been there five and a half years now. I will admit, it took me a while to start letting people in. I've never had much luck with having friends and being bullied all through school made me highly cautious. But you can't go to Lifehouse and not make friends unless you're just determined to sit in your chair alone and refuse to talk to anyone or participate in anything. Dawn pulled me into Book Club, which has been a huge blessing. Gary and Debbie kept giving me jobs to do and ministries to get involved in. In 2023 I switched from the PhD program I originally started in to the clinical doctorate program I'm in now and made new long-distance friends there (were planning to finally meet in person rather than zoom at graduation.) I'm seeing clients now and finally feel like I'm truly living God's purpose for my life between my nutrition clinical work and church work. 

And - I can honestly say for the first time maybe ever that I'm not lonely. I have so many people now between church and book club and school and work... it's a beautiful thing. It wasn't easy. I had to let myself open up and let people in. I had to deconstruct those walls I'd built up every time I was bullied or my heart was broken when another friend disappeared. 

So if you're feeling a little wilted and like you've got brown spot disease on all your leaves... don't cut them all off. Figure out what's causing your wilt, remove that from your life, or add what's missing. You may need to change where you are or what you're doing. Ask God where you're supposed to be and what He wants you to do. Go do whatever it is, find your people, flourish... and grow!