I remember living in the same house for the first nine years of my life. Moving day felt like mourning day-- a tragic ending to a once happy story. But once we got an hour or so down the road, there was a fresh sense of excitement in the car. It was a new beginning, and as long as my family was together, I felt like we could go anywhere and thrive.
Fast forward and my family didn't stay together, but God was uprooting me so that I could be firmly rooted in better soil. Now I'm "uprooting" our kids every week if not multiple times a week. Many would argue that this is detrimental to their health and well-being because once upon a time, it was believed that a stable home produced stable people. But our home is on wheels, and it's quite unstable, especially when a strong wind blows!
When we uproot, we are pulling a plant or a person from it's base in order to re-plant it in a healthier place. Many of our homes and neighborhoods produce the same standard vegetation for their region, but what if that particular harvest harms the overall growth? What if we succumb to copy-cat characters rather than an organic piece of produce?
"Uprooting" your family has so many negative connotations that most people keep their kids in the same school and in the same neighborhood as long as physically possible. Military families, on the other hand, demonstrate the many challenges and corresponding benefits that come from "uprooting."
Enough replants and you'll begin to witness a permanent change in the vegetation. The dirt beneath it doesn't change. Instead, the produce has been pulled so many times that it transforms and receives a new name, like a kumquat. It doesn't exactly fit into the familiar orange family.
When we are uprooted for a short time, a temporary season, a mission trip, a vacation, then we are likely to draw back to the regularity of our old soil and our old shape. Just as many people said after the pandemic, "We won't go back to that busy, hectic lifestyle," but the demands and pressures are so tightly woven into the fabric of our society that the pull overtakes us, and our schedules return.
Sometimes we need to uproot our families and ourselves in order to gain new heartbeats-- to shake us up and view life from a different vantage point. If we let God replant us for as long or short as He deems necessary, then we don't hesitate when it's time to uproot again.
Our rational thoughts no longer overpower the Spiritual one. God's voice is given full authority so that we enjoy seasons of planting or seasons of uprooting.
We are in an extended season of "uprooting" for the sake of God's kingdom-- reshaping the norms that have clung to our rational minds for so long. I pray that when it's time to plant again, we'll be so changed, that it won't matter what vegetation is around us, we'll remain faithful to the call He's placed on our lives-- the kumquat call. And I for one need more uprooting than anyone in my tribe. I have long followed that which brings the most peace to the most people. But when I am resting in Him, I can live at peace no matter where He's called us to live, and no matter the chaos looming around us.
"There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens:
a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot." (Ecclesiastes 3:1-2)
Here's to saying yes to the crazy calls that make for incredible stories. Uproot day after day in order to root yourself in God, and never root yourself so deeply in this life that you can't uproot when God calls you home.
~Carefully and Carelessly uprooting
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