When I Grow Up
“It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.”
I never liked pruning season.
To be honest though, I never really was aware of pruning season; being a city girl and all. That is, until the year I got married and my life changed forever.
Seven months after my wedding day in 2006, Jermaine and I moved back to his family home in Pomona. To be precise, we moved into his sister’s old bedroom. That was probably the hardest part of it for Jermaine’s psyche. He swore he’d never move home.
To make matters worse, he’d moved with a new wife and crammed his new life into his baby sister’s haven of vintage New Edition posters and dance trophies.
For my part, I had moved from my parents house when I was in college. By the time I was 20, the old family home I knew had been packed up and moved across the country from California to Louisiana.
I hadn’t lived with a parental unit in years and now I was living with someone else’s parents; in-laws who were kind and polite, but who hadn’t always liked me for reasons beyond my ability to alter.
To add insult to injury, I had just summarily closed my Beverly Hills-based entertainment business management practice and short-sold my condo in Culver City at the beginning of what would later be known as the Great Recession.
I waved a teary goodbye to my Mercedes CLK convertible and moved thirty miles from my closest friend - which might as well have been three thousand the way most of us Angelenos view distance, traffic and friendship lol!
And I was fresh off of listening incredulously as a newly-installed pastor - someone I had personally ministered to many times - told me that the leadership determined I should take a break for a while.
Yeah. Like I said. Pruning.
“I had just summarily closed my Beverly Hills-based entertainment business management practice and short-sold my condo...”
Our room faced the backyard and gave a wide-windowed view of a pomegranate tree they’d had for decades. We’d been there for weeks and I hadn’t noticed it once. Shock over my new living situation took over everything. Nevertheless, I still managed to squeak out some surprise when I rolled over and saw the bare, stripped-down limbs devoid of any fruit, flower, or leaf.
It was the end of October, smack dab in the middle of fall, and the barrenness of that tree would go on to mock my own every single morning for months.
Every day, I would turn over and the first thing I’d see was that naked tree. Then I would weep; feeling the holes inside myself.
The depression that crept in and waited for me to open my eyes each day was relentless. So I adopted a habit to combat my old foe and salvage days that were determinedly set up to be dumpster fires.
I worshiped.
Yes, I sang. But true worship may have any or no melody/beat at all.
“...the barrenness of that tree would go on to mock my own every single morning for months. ”
True worship is opening your heart and inviting God in for a conversation - acknowledging the need for a higher perspective and counsel - with or without music. Personally, I mostly prefer music so it was to my old friend, Fred Hammond, and his ‘Free to Worship’ album that I turned.
Yes, I worshiped.
Every day. Every morning until the depression broke. Every. Single. Day.
I SAID WORSHIP. I DIDN’T SAY WHERE. GET CREATIVE ;)
The Bible talks about putting on the whole armor of God to defend yourself when battling strong spiritual forces (Ephesians 6 if you wanna look it up). One of those elements is the ‘helmet of salvation’. In one sense (the one that matters here), it’s speaking of spiritually protecting your headspace, mind, and the seat of all movement.
Because if you can’t think, you can’t move.
Practically, this roughly translates to putting on the right mindset that will save your day and save your life. The mindset that says that despite whatever it looks like, God loves you and has fruitfulness and good plans ahead for you.
“If you can’t think,
you can’t move.”
When you’re in a battle against your own overwhelming thoughts, hopeful promises for tomorrow are hard to come by but they exist. I learned how to submit myself and my situation, depression and fears to God; laying my heart before Him. And He soothed my soul every time and landed me in a better place than I had good reason for which to hope.
Yes, I worshiped and exercised myself in inviting God’s wisdom into my life for many years. I successfully and repeatedly used the power it released to catapult me into joy, rest, and peace. The depression broke that first day and then the next and then the next. It broke every day that I worshiped in front of that bare tree that looked like me.
NO MATTER HOW DEAD THAT TREE LOOKS…. LIFE 🌳
And then one morning I looked up and that naked tree had tiny green leaves all over it. I remember it like it was yesterday. My heart thudded in my chest with a rhythm I didn’t immediately recognize. What was this? New life? New promise?
Restored fruitfulness.
That’s what the tree was signifying: that though the externals were quite obviously stripped, yet still, the renewable source of life of that tree remained. And at the appointed time and at the right moment, life resumed. Life reemerged.
“[The depression] broke every day that I worshiped in front of that bare tree that looked like me.”
Pruning is never fun. It’s never sexy. And no one ever wants to do it. But the pomegranates that yielded from that tree the following spring and summer were more than the family and neighbors had seen in years. The cutting back led to more. This is the cycle of life.
Today, I am writing and creating in a field I’ve loved since childhood and I live in a home more than three times the size of my old condo. I can choose which car I want to drive for my grocery run and my friends fly 5k miles round-trip fairly regularly to hang out with me, love on one another and enjoy Maui.
YOU KNOW HOW I LOVE A GOOD BOAT DAY ~ MAUI
Ministry has taken on an entirely different look and feel - one that is lighter and way more fun. And I have been honored to see more people touched and healed by the simplicity of simply loving them with God’s love than in all the years I tried so hard to be ‘right’ and get everybody else ‘right’ too.
A few months after that fateful call to step away from leadership all those years ago, I was reinstalled into a higher role. By then, something profound transpired:
God proved to me that whether I was so low that I couldn’t see the ground or anyone was around to validate who or what I was, He was there. I was valid to Him.
He convinced me that my temporary feelings and (seemingly) insurmountable depression couldn’t and wouldn’t stop the good plans He’d already assigned for my life.
And He supported me as I took my first shaky steps and stood in the brightening halls of a confidence that comes only from knowing you are greatly loved.
Now I see pruning for what it is: The loving touch of a gentle gardener whose intent is fullness, prosperity, and abundance.
And so it is.
My prayer is that you experience a rush of fullness overtake you and everything you touch. And that, for all that has been cut and stripped away throughout the pruning seasons of your life, you would receive, experience and FULLY enjoy more than double for your trouble!
If you agree, put a 🌳🌳 in the comments.
God loves you and so do I 💋
Be good to you. You’re goin’ somewhere, honey 🦋
~ Love, Samantha
