Transplanting

Last month when I brought home all of my plants from Lowes I had no idea where I wanted to put each one. 

Not only am I not familiar with the sun patterns in my yard yet, I’m also not good at telling what things will look good together.  So I consoled myself by saying that if it turned out that I didn’t like something, I could always move it.

 

It was right about that time that I wrote the post about having left North Carolina a year ago.  My cousin Erin wrote a very thoughtful comment that I’ve been thinking about since then.  She wrote that when a plant is moved from one place to another, it experiences transplant shock.  The reason that you need to water transplanted plants is that they aren’t able yet to get water from their surroundings.  Eventually their roots will start to reach out into the new ground and they will eventually be able to sustain themselves in their new location.

I thought about this idea as I moved pots around in my yard, telling myself each time I finally planted something that I could move it later if I didn’t like it there.  “It will be fine,” I told myself, “I can move it over and over again until I find the right spot.”

It occurred to me that I am so grateful that God doesn’t “plant” us this way.  He knows what the right spot is for us from the beginning, and he moves us there in the right time.  It may hurt to be transplanted and may take us a while to begin to send out roots in our new location, but at least we know that this gardener isn’t going to be moving us back and forth randomly, trying to figure out the best place.  And that, at least, is a comfort.