Learning to Grow Love Plants

This week I am growing love plants.

(That’s gotta’ be the best way I have ever started a blog post.)

Last weekend we left a town and people I love to visit another town and people I love. Due to our ministry as a coaching family we are, and perpetually will be, in “the wedding years.” No matter how old we get, we always have former players reaching that precious time when they fall in love with their forever person and we get invited to the ceremony. It’s one of the coolest perks of the job to watch these young men grow up, get married, have kids, and live out the seeds you hope you planted in them years ago.

It’s an odd sensation when we go to this other town. We are so very happy in our new place. We have friends and community and events that are becoming traditions. But when we get to that old place our hearts bust open as we hug people, relive the memories, and somehow miss them, even more, when they are standing right there in front of us.

It really shouldn’t surprise me I guess. When you plant your heart among people and places it’s bound to happen. As my husband says, we “spilled a lot of blood in the mud” in that other place. I guess blood makes for some pretty good fertilizer as it seems a piece of our heart is permanently planted there.

I wanted to share this for two reasons…

1. Because I know some of you who live in each of those places will read this. I need you to know that we love you and we ache when we are away from you, both of you.

2. And because some of you have it in your head that “bloom where you are planted” means that you can’t have blooms planted anywhere else. That’s just hogwash. I have exactly zero knowledge of horticulture, but even I know you can divide plants. A little bit of what was once one thing can exist beautifully in two different places.

One of the most incredible qualities of God is that He is omnipresent. That means He is fully present in all places at the same time. We can’t do that, obviously. But you guys, we are reflections of God. And we can do things in our lives that reflect His character because we were designed in His image.

God can allow for our hearts to be in many places at once without painfully cutting it into pieces. Rather than being made smaller, love can just divide and grow again in that new place, and that old place. Your heart can live in multiple places.

You. Do. Not. Have. To. Choose.

If you have lived in a place, worked in a place, loved a person, lost a person, gone on a mission trip, served a people, had an experience, cherished a home, created a memory, created a baby or just had your heart raptured by a sunset…you can let part of it stay there. In fact, I encourage it. We are less likely to withhold our hearts when we’ve learned how to give it away.

Remember, God’s greenhouse is the perfect environment to let Him split your heart and plant it again somewhere else. It will always regrow there.