Movin' On.....

One of the hardest and most freeing things we face in life is change. Change is something we all need, but at the same time, most of us are forced into it. Why? Because even though it is good, the growing part of it hurts, sometimes worse than death. But we have to know that "change" isn't death at all, it's "life". One of my favorite songs in the entire world is "I'm Movin' on" its about letting go of our past and realizing there's still a future. With the Lord our future is always brighter than our past; the sun has already set on yesterday. Letting go of relationships is something we all go through, and it feels the same, no matter how old we are. I believe sometimes the Lord takes people out of our lives because we're not ready for them, or they're not for us. There was a plant once in my back yard, it was very small. It was suppose to be a large plant, but no matter how much I babied it, it never got bigger. It was so pretty, with beautiful flowers and green leafs, it just wasn't as big as it should have been. One day I got the Idea to move the plant, transplant it, away from the tree I had planted it under; I had planted it there for the shade, I didn't want the sun to kill it. I moved it away from it's best-friend, the tree. Right after I moved it, I thought it was going to die. It's leaves started to change to a pail green. "What have I done?", I kept asking myself. "I should have left it under the tree, at least there it was safe.", I kept thinking. It was a long hard year for the plant, it fought so hard to stay alive. I expected at the start of spring I would be removing it, I just knew it'd be dead. "The outside of the plant is going through so many changes, the roots must be dying.", I thought. Spring finally arrived! I hadn't looked out the back window in weeks, nothing to see but a yard full of snow. The first nice day of the year I decided to go play in the yard, I was so excited about planting new flowers. I remember thinking, "What can I put in place of that dead plant?", I knew I wanted something big, like the old plant was suppose to be. Walking around my yard, the transplanted plant didn't look 'All the way' dead, so I decided to leave it for a few more weeks. A few weeks turned into months, and by the end of the summer the plant was three times its largest size from last summer. The plant would have been happy just staying under the tree and not growing anymore, but that's not what God intended for it. A few years latter I was moving from that house, I decided I wanted to take the plant with me. I went out back with a shovel and a box, ready to dig it up. Digging up the plant, I left enough room around the edges not to cut the roots. When I picked it up and pulled it to put it in the box, part of the root was really long and still buried. I pulled and pulled the root, "Why is this root so long?", I asked myself. After following and pulling the root up, to be sure I had the entire plant, I finely came to the end of the root. The root had grown all the way across the yard and stopped under the tree it was transplanted from. When we 'Move on' we are really never gone from where we were, everyone we come in contact with leaves roots in our lives and we leave them in theirs, we leave a direct dotted line to each other. It's almost certain, when we are the tree that protects someone, one day we will have to be the tree that allows them to grow.