Sometimes I’m an exiled plant that doesn’t look like the rest in the garden. Without realizing it and simply because of the goodness of God, I have become a thriving plant. It’s evaluating myself through God’s eyes - not my own or others’. It's staying humble and having a servant’s heart in a frustrating career. It’s finding opportunities for fulfillment in every conversation. It’s making a home wherever you lay your head. This is what thriving looks like: It’s community that becomes family. I’m not exactly the poster child for “crushing it.”īut man, I finally get it. I sometimes eat candy for dinner, and most vegetables I buy turn rotten and end up in the trash. I sublet a room smaller than the pastel offices I described above, and I am far from my family. Most days I leave work extremely frustrated. If you had come up to me on the street last week and asked me if I was “living my best life,” which I assume is millennial speak for “thriving,” I probably would have ignored you completely - let’s face it, I am a New Yorker after all - rolled my eyes, and shuddered at the influx of memories of sitting in those offices talking about this topic.Īnd the truth is, looking from the outside, I’m not sure I’d put my life in the category of “thriving.” We thrive because we plant ourselves with deep roots into the ever-flowing water that is the source of life. Until I realized we don’t thrive because we strive. The idea of having to graduate from an Ivy League college, get a dream job and love doing it, have tons of friends, be esteemed in a community, make lots of money, exercise, smile, eat vegetables and have a family.was exhausting. That, it turns out, is an important question. “How can we get you there?” the doctors would ask. I was repeatedly told the goal of life is not surviving, but thriving. At that point in my life, I felt completely invisible and disconnected. My teenage angst had spiraled into full-blown depression and an eating disorder. I remember sitting in one doctor’s office after another, each with walls a different shade of pastel blue or yellow, and some with white noise machines hissing on the other side of the door. There was a time in my life when my goal was simply to survive. Just like I can’t drench a plant in water and put it in the fridge and hope for the best. It took an embarrassingly long time for me to realize I can’t “self-help” my way into maturity and a full life. Thriving, according to the Bible, has nothing to do with external circumstances and everything to do with what’s happening below the surface.įor a long time, I also didn’t know how to thrive. The Bible talks a lot about us thriving and flourishing, and the metaphor used is usually a plant or tree with deep roots in rich soil near flowing waters. The plant lived for about 3 months.Īll that is to say that I have no clue what makes a plant thrive. Once every few days the plant would spend a night in the refrigerator because I arbitrarily decided it was overheating on the windowsill. I watered it despite the instructions because, after all, as a Biology major I knew best. I Googled “plants that are hard to kill” and then bought one of those “air plants” that in theory should stay alive until the apocalypse. The record of longevity goes to a plant I purchased at Home Depot in college.
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