When I inherited this plant it was just about root bound. All of the roots were intertwined and I wasn’t sure if I could separate them. They were all so accustomed and adapted to each other that they literally were in knots. I began to separate them and heard a terrible tearing ripping sound. I wondered the whole time if I had damaged them beyond repair.  It took quite a while to get them all as individual plants. When I do things like this I seem to go to another place in my thoughts.  As I was tearing the roots apart I began thinking about my own life and how deeply my roots were established in areas of my life. By the time I was 40 my root system was well established in all of the lives and people I had journeyed with so far. It was a great ripping away to suddenly see life change overnight. Yet as I worked on separating the plants I realized a great truth I had learned. Although the plants did okay in the pot all mingled together. Each was choking off the other and the plants had grown just about as far as they could all being so compacted in one small pot. I was thinking about how small we let the world become sometimes and how complacent we get thinking there is just a small life out there and a comfortable existence. As I separated the plants and repotted each of them in a new container. It was amazing how transforming that was for them. They each became what they were supposed to in their own container and thrived in a new way better than before. I had to smile as I thought about all of the new roots my life has grown in the last 10 years and how differently it is planted now than it was before then. Not that my life is all I desire because I still have a lot of heart’s desires. The ripping away of my roots was painfully hard. The only thing I knew for a long time was pain. As I think back about those plants. Once each was separated into a new container they required different levels of care to get them back healthy again. What one needed was inappropriate for the other. That is a huge lesson I am still learning as I try to help others. 

Here’s the challenge in life when we are ripped out of our normal existence. Allow yourself to be replanted in a new life that GOD carves out for you. That’s easier said than done I know. Allow yourself to bloom again. I can’t do this without  being connected to the body of Christ and plugged into his WORD.

I love the verse in Isaiah 61:3 To appoint unto  those who mourn in Zion,
To give them beauty for ashes,
The oil of joy for mourning,
The garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness;
That they may be called trees of righteousness,
The planting of the Lord, that He may be glorified

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