*To listen to this article, please click here.
Houseplants have made a humongous comeback in the last few years, taking up all available surface space in our homes with overwhelming vigor. It's a cute little habit that somehow gets out of control so quickly! During the 2020 event that shall not be discussed lest we feel our eyes twitch in remembrance, everyone took up new hobbies to keep from going crazy...er. Crazier. It was a time, that's for sure. Anyway, houseplants were one of those things that many people began to invest their time, money, and emotional well-being. The trouble was that most of us didn't really know how to keep them alive. We saw beautifully staged photographs of plants on bookshelves, in dark corners, on tabletops in the center of rooms, and in plenty of other locations that looked so pretty! If you were like me, you may have just thought that all a plant needed was sun and water. Right? Everyone was buying and killing plants almost as quickly as we purchased them. Eventually, I began to see people calling certain plants “fussy” or “difficult”. One of those plants is the fiddle leaf fig. Yep, I purchased, loved, and killed four of these beautiful plants. I did exactly what I saw in everyone's stunning Instagram posts, and I put my fiddle leaf fig in a sunny room, watering it once a week. Soon, I noticed leaves yellowing on the stems. The soil was much wetter than I knew it should be, so I pulled back on my watering routine. Whoops. Too dry. I could not seem to please the poor plant, and in no time at all, it was beyond saving. I repeated this process with another three fiddle leaf figs, struggling to find what made them happy, and striking out every time. It seemed that everyone I saw on social media was talking about how these plants were so hard to please and impossible to keep alive. That wasn't a flattering view of a plant that thrived so well in nature, often growing more than 50 feet in height! So why couldn't I keep even one alive for longer than a few weeks?
Eventually, I discovered a social media creator who goes by the name Tanner the Planter. He and his wife own a plant shop in Texas and are passionate about teaching people how to care for their houseplants and helping people understand what those plants need. (I highly recommend looking him up on social media if you have plants! The knowledge that he shares is invaluable.) Soon I began to realize that I was failing with my fiddle leaf figs simply because I didn't know what they needed. That corner of the room that I placed my plant in because it looked so pretty in the magazine? It got no light, and the soil couldn't dry out well enough, causing root rot. The spot in my living room where a shaft of light touched the leaves for part of the day? It wasn't the proper light. The light was touching it, but the plant didn't actually have a view of the open sky, which Tanner says is tantamount to the health of this particular plant. After all, photosynthesis can only take place when the plant gets the amount of sunlight that it was created to need. And the more nutrients and proper light a plant gets, the more it will grow. There were a multitude of things that I was doing wrong because I didn't know how to give the plant what it needed. It wasn't fussy at all, but I didn't have the knowledge I needed to grow that plant successfully.
How often does this sound like our lives? We aren't thriving in a situation, so we try other things, but we don't see marked improvement, and we continue to decline. Remember the death plug I talked about in my last post about plants? There might not be anything choking the life out of us or introducing bacteria, we just have failure to thrive. Why? Because we don't have what we need. See, God gives us everything that we need, but we often have to position ourselves properly to receive it. God gives us the gift of growth and warmth, but if we hide away in the shadows, we can't benefit from it. If we stand back and only glimpse a little of the light, we can feel its warmth, but we can't benefit from its direct rays. Only when we stand close, unafraid, with an unobstructed view of wide open sky can we truly get what we need. When Jesus died on the cross for us, it wasn't just for our sins and sicknesses. He also gave Himself as a sacrifice that would forever eliminate the separation between us and The Father. We can now approach Him without hindrance or fear, just like a child has no fear in asking their parents for hugs or snacks. But we often still fear that we aren't worthy to be in God's presence, so we hide in a shadowed corner. Or we get braver and sit in a shaft of His light, but still out of direct eye contact with Him. What our Father wants is for us to look Him in the eye. To see the love in His gaze. When we do that, we will find everything we need to grow and flourish.
In addition to our closeness to the Father, we don't always realize that we need something different than we are getting. Those plants that I killed were often getting all the right things in all the wrong amounts. Sure, there was light in the room they sat in, but not enough. Sure, they were getting water, but it was too much. They didn't have something they didn't need, but they weren't getting what they needed in the right quantities. The formula was all wrong. Have you ever looked around yourself and wondered why you aren't seeing success in an area when you know that you are doing all the right things? It is frustrating, isn't it? If you aren't in the right environment, you will find yourself withering and dying. God has the right environment for you, and the changes you need to make might be enormous, but they might also be small. A plant might be dying for lack of sunlight, but scooting its pot a mere six inches in either direction can put it exactly where it needs to be. Another plant might have to leave the room it's in. And yet another plant might have to live outside altogether. Each person, much like plants, needs something wildly different than the next person. This might change from season to season, as well!
Eventually, I stopped buying fiddle leaf fig plants. I knew that I wasn't giving them what they needed and that I needed to learn a lot more before I tried again. More than a year after the last one that I sent off to a growing graveyard of plants I had failed with, I rescued a pot from a big box store that had several kinds of plants in it; none of which had the same soil or watering needs. Among them, I found a small fiddle leaf fig. I took each of those plants out of the planter and gave them their own home, not giving myself much hope for the fiddle leaf fig. However, I had already learned a lot by watching videos from Tanner, the creator I mentioned above. I followed his advice when it came to watering and sunlight, and soon I began to see success! My plant still grows more slowly than others who do well with this type, but it has been over two years and it's healthy! Do I still make mistakes? Oh yeah. Am I determined to continue to learn what this plant needs? Also yeah! Just like we will always need to adjust what we are doing to give our plants the right environment and fulfill their needs, we also need to do the same in our spiritual lives. Allow the Holy Spirit to tell you what changes you need to make in your life to bring success and health to everything you do. Remember that it doesn't always mean you have wrong things in your life, they just might not be serving the season that you're in or your position. Set your gaze on your Father. He will show you the way to go, and He will give you what you need to grow!
Comments