Weed Killer

Last Wednesday I stood in front of a group of new Navy wives

to present my section as part of the Compass program.

My section is called Local Insights and the purpose of it is to

encourage these new wives to get involved in their community.

My friend Melissa and I present this section together.

Melissa had the great idea to compare our lives

as navy spouses to that of a garden.

Our motto is "bloom where you are planted".

We have the cutest board where we have a big tree,

a sunshine, clouds and flowers

all representative of an aspect of our lives.

Melissa tells a story of her daughter bringing home from school

a painted pot with a marigold seed

tucked deep into the soil.

She brought it home in December.

Doubting that it would ever bloom off season,

Melissa and her daughter cared for it and

watered it every day until one day

they got a little sprout.

Surprisingly, the marigold grew to produce flowers

in less than ideal circumstances.

And so goes our theme.

I'm sure you can plainly see our analogy.

So there I stood, very convincingly telling these girls

that embracing the "bloom where you are planted"

motto for themselves will transform their

quality of life from merely surviving to thriving.

Sounds good, right?

Fast forward six days

and here I am sobbing at my computer desk

over so many thoughts swimming around in my head.

I wasn't blooming at all yesterday,

I was withering fast.

Weeds of doubt, longing, discontent and jealousy

were choking out any hope that

the flowers in my life would raise their colorful faces to the sun.

And so there I sat feeling sorry for myself.

Replaying over and over again how hard it is

to be on a separate coast from my family.

How much it stinks that my parents can't see

the daily happenings in my kid's lives.

How sad it is that their sporting events and

school events are attended by just David and I

and more often just me.

How frustrating it is that I have to uproot my business

every couple of years

and never really get a chance to live up to my potential.

I was allowing the slugs of "poor me" eat away at my fading leaves.

At times in my life it has been very difficult to maintain contentment.

This is one of them.

Yesterday it started with two little weeds of

"Gosh, I miss my family"

and

"Will I ever get this photography business off the ground?"

and those weeds grew into

"I have ruined my kids by moving so far away from family and

uprooting my kids in the middle of the school year four out of the last six years."

and

"I might as well just give up my dream of ever being a full time photographer

because it is just too hard to keep starting over!"

And then the weeds continued to choke out my blooms with,

"I didn't sign up to do this alone with an often deploying husband

and way too distant grandparents, uncles and cousins!"

Ug! I just hate attacks of the killer weeds!

I know in my heart that all of these are lies.

Sure we have it hard.

My kids don't get to benefit from having family around them.

I do have to hold this fort down alone much of the time.

They do have holes in their education.

I will have to postpone my ultimate dream of owning a real studio for at least

the next decade.

But,

on the other hand,

God has put us here for a reason.

I really do believe that.

He knows where I am and why I am here

and he promised to handle this all for me.

He hasn't left me here alone.

He has definitely blessed me with an awesome

navy family of other spouses while I am here

in Washington.

During times like this, I cling to my life verse

and use it as my weed killer.

Jeremiah 29:11 says:

"For I know that the weeds are going to come and try to overtake you,

but I am the master gardener and I've got plenty of weed killer

ready for you. I won't let those weeds choke the life out of you.

You are going to be a beautiful fruitful garden one day.

I promise."

Well, it really doesn't say that....

but that's how I am applying it today.

Here is what it really says:

"For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord.

Plans to prosper you and not to harm you.

Plans to give you a future and a hope."

So, even though I might feel like my family is being harmed

right now, and I feel like the weeds

are wrapping tightly around my roots,

God has a plan.

He promises to give me a future and a hope.

So, take that you stupid weeds!

I end my presentation with a list.

I wrote this list to remind myself of how thankful I will be one day

that we really did bloom where we were planted.

Here it is word for word from my presentation notes:

Having been a navy family for 17 years,

we have lived in all four corners of the United States.

We have moved 6 times and have been through 14 deployments.
Some may say that that seems like a fragmented life

full of longing for family and familiarity,

and in some ways, they would be right.

But when I look back,

I’m so blessed to know that we have good friends all over this country

and we’ve really lived in every place we’ve been stationed.
My kids have swam in both oceans of America's coasts

and the emerald waters of the Gulf of Mexico.

We’ve seen Niagara Falls, the Grand Canyon and Mt. Rushmore.
We’ve been to Las Vegas and the Hoover Dam.

We’ve seen the stars on Hollywood Blvd

and have sipped sweet tea underneath the Spanish moss

in the thick Southern heat.

We've seen Mickey Mouse on both coasts.

We've cheered on the FSU seminoles in Tallahassee

and the Dodgers in Los Angeles.

We've wandered through old western ghost towns

and the historic streets of Saint Augustine.

We ate pizza at the oldest pizza parlor in NYC

and had beignets in New Orleans.

We've thrown snowballs in New England

and have held starfish from the tidepools in Southern California.

We’ve gone deep sea fishing ,

toured “old ironsides” (the USS Constitution)
and have ridden the fastest wooden roller coaster

on the west coast.

We've been to the geographical center of the United States

and high up on a ski lift in New Hampshire.

We’ve walked the freedom trail in Boston and the sandy beaches of Malibu.
We’ve visited countless museums, aquariums, gardens and state parks.

We’ve led full, vibrant lives

all because we decided that we were going to embrace

the best side of this Navy life.
I’m thankful that we made it a goal as a family

to visit as many points of interest in each of our duty stations

because our kids will be able to look back at all they were able to see and do

just because their dad was a sailor.