The Tiniest Cedar

Bloom where you’re planted. I get that advice a lot. I just moved again this weekend for the sixteenth time since I turned eighteen years old almost eleven years ago. As you read this, let’s just hope I remembered to unpack the coffee maker and put sheets on the bed before I passed out last night.

Sometimes I get worried that the roots of my majestic cedar or the branches of my mustard plant haven’t been flourishing. All this change! I spent enough time trying to help in the yard as a kid to know that unless I’m a hosta, all this transplanting is not going to be great for my prospects of blooming.

But God, He’s a miracle worker. I’m not too different from that tiny cedar sapling. He trimmed me from the mighty tree. (Ezekiel 17:22) He found a place for me. Sometimes it feels like I am a little sapling that got trimmed off and then thrown in the back of a truck without a good root ball, and maybe that’s true. But the Gardener hasn’t forgotten me. The journey to the place I’ll grow best might be long, but there is a place appointed for me. Sure, the air is a little thin on the mountain top, and the soil is a bit rocky, but that is the place He has chosen.

All of my instability? It hasn’t been chance. I’ve discerned and listened and followed the Spirit to the ground most fertile for me. I can rest knowing that the rains will come and help my roots grow deep and my boughs grow strong. This sapling that is rattling around in the back of the nursery truck right now will be planted. The lowly, withered tree will bloom.

There is a place appointed for me. // @br1gidClick to tweet

If you're feeling unearthed and unrooted, take a second today to reflect on God's infinite love for you and trust He's going to work with where you are today, too.

Brigid Hogan is a high school English and ESL teacher who lives in northeast DC. She is passionate about Catholic social teaching and tries to live it out daily in her relationships and community. Most of her pleasures are guilty ones like television, burritos, and Twitter. Find out more about her here. She is the author of our Blessed Conversations Mystery: Beloved found here.