My Life in a Basil Plant - Allison Post

thankful that God makes us better through unexpected change.

an allison post

It's WILD to look back and see where we've been before. In the last post, we were in Latvia, and I was unaware of being 3 weeks pregnant (which explains the beginning of some food aversions and sensitivity to smell!)

Fast Forward, we are just hitting 37 weeks pregnant and its an ENTIRELY different ball game. I've been up for hours trying to reconcile my hips attempting to separate themselves from the rest of my body, but hey, it's only temporary, right?! I figured this was a perfect opportunity to unpack something I was thinking about yesterday.

So over the past 9 months we have been UP and we have definitely been DOWN. (Sometimes it can be easier to dwell on the down, but balance is everything.) While pondering on the fight for balance, i sometimes ask myself what it's worth to endure suffering (be it minimal and momentary or long and difficult). I turned to my windowsill yesterday after starting this mental discourse and it just hit me: I am my basil plant!!!!

I've killed a lot of herbs and household plants this year, including my birthday cacti. As Kristin Cobwell says, WE DON'T JUDGE! But I have this ONE basil plant that has been more than faithful to me for the past 3 months. Its very green, many fronds, and had many stalks. Super healthy plant...maybe a little TOO healthy. It started needing some crowd control for one thing as the stalks were pushing against each other, blocking one another from good airflow and harvesting which also lead to a small mold problem. Jeremiah suggested chopping off two of the highest stalks which had tons of perfectly fine leaves on them. I was skeptical, but let him thin them. After observing the plant a little more, I saw that some of the stems were pushing to the borders of the container -- this little guy needed a new pot. So my landlord gave me a ton of dirt and my choice of potting containers, and we transplanted. I was concerned that all these changes were gonna kill my plant, stunt it's growth. But to my surprise, it has yielded more happy fronds. It's healthy AND made new again.

I can not tell you how much I've seen me in this plant since we committed to going to Norway. I was doing pretty well where I was, thriving in my cozy Richmond and searching for purpose. Finding it even. But I believe that God knew to prune me. There are ways that I've grown here in which I couldn't have had I stayed in those "good places" at the time in my life. For the eyes God wanted me to have, and the maturation of my spiritual walk, this transplantation has surrendered me into an incredible balance in my life. My dependency on Jesus more than my loving families, trusted friendships, and noble causes has had to define me and compel me in my pursuit to love people, and to love God for that matter. Even though it's not always easy, I see what God has done for me and in me. And I'm better for it.