"Bloom where you are planted"
I read that phrase tonight in a letter from a well meaning person. I heard it at church on Sunday when I overheard a conversation. I hear it here and there. And every time I cringe. I want to hold my ears shut. I want to throw those words on the ground if I could and crush the "living daylights" out of them.
Why? Because well meaning people use them and sometimes do much damage with them. It is just another reminder at how our good intentions can do more harm than good especially if it's words.
And those words always take me back to a letter I got from one who used to be my closest friend and had walked with me through thick and thin.
The reason for the letter: I left her church.
My reason for leaving: I had studied Scripture and asked God to give me answers for my questions because no one else could give me satisfying answers and I realized I could not longer support that church.
The letter I burned. It was downright mean what she wrote; manipulation, gaslighting, threatening, and other...all in the name of Jesus and "Christian concern"...
In that letter she wrote that I need to bloom where I was planted... which was my parent's church. That I had made a bad decision. That she feared for my soul. I was in shock by the words of her letter.
When I needed my friends the most that's when they all walked away. I realized the ones I thought were friends proved that they weren't.
They say: Bloom where you are planted.
I say: Sometimes you need to be transplanted when you outgrow your pot.
(A little bit ago someone said that they don't want to be hopping from one church to another if they were to leave where they are currently . I didn't say anything but what I wanted to say was: Sometimes you outgrow your church. It becomes like a pot that's too small and your growth will be stunted. You can choose whether you will be stunted or whether you will flourish.