Surviving vs Stretching: The Spiritual Cost of Staying Put

The Location

One of my daily activities is going for a walk. Almost every morning, I get up, get dressed, and go for a walk around my neighborhood. The goal is at least to close my exercise ring on my Apple watch, but I try to get in about three miles. I generally walk the same route daily, and one day I noticed a batch of succulents beneath a public sign.  I am not sure how the plants made it there, but they are tightly clustered together. After noticing them, I decided to take one to place in a pot I had in my office. So after my walk, I went home, grabbed a trowel, found one of the plants, and took it back to my office, where I placed it in a small pot. I grabbed a trowel and a plastic bag and went back to collect one of the succulents. I retrieved it, brought it to my office, and placed it in a small pot.

It has been a few months since I grabbed the plant, and as I was in my quiet time in my office, something said, "Look at the plant." I noticed that the plant has grown considerably. You would not believe that this plant was among the plants under the sign. The plants under the sign were the same size as before and had developed a purple hue along the edges, but the plant in my office was almost unrecognizable. It is about 3-4 inches tall, split into almost three separate plants, and a friend advised me that I might need a new pot for it. During my quiet time, something jumped out at me that made the growth of the plant in my office seem so different from that of the one outside. They were getting more water. I am not the best at watering, and since we live in the Pacific Northwest, we get a lot of drizzle. They get direct sun, and this plant is in my office, which doesn’t face the sun most days. Why is the plant in my office growing so differently? Then something said it is the change in environment.

Romanticizing Survival

When I saw the plants outside, I was impressed with their purple color, but after doing some research, I realized something: succulents turn that color when they are in distress. The red or purple color indicates that the environment they are in is in distress. It is winter, and the cold and rain have the plant in survival mode. What I saw as a pretty color is actually the plant doing everything it can to survive. If we’re honest, a lot of us are the same way.

In our culture, we love to romanticize survival. We think of it as a badge of honor to endure. We love the underdog story, the person who would not quit in the midst of all the adversity. We love lovers who, through all the obstacles placed in front of them, make it through. Even in the church, we have testimony services where people can speak to the But God moments of endurance in our lives. We celebrate those who can bear down and endure until the bitter end, but the problem in our celebration of survival is that we overlook what it is to flourish.

Flourishing is not simply getting all the things you want, but truly following God’s design. This looks way different than survival mode. In survival mode, we are at a job we cannot stand. Mainly because it is the first place to hire us, and we remember the job-search process. Even though we feel stuck and stagnant, we're barely paying the bills, so we’ll stick it out. Some of us are in relationships with people that we are not really impressed with. We’re just existing together because being together is better than being alone. We are afraid that if we leave them, we won’t be able to find anyone or anything else. We keep going to that church even though we know it's not providing anything more than a place to be on Sunday morning, but hey, we know everyone. We know all six songs the choir will sing and the twelve sermons in rotation the pastor will preach. We are not growing, but it is easier than looking for a new place to worship. We are just trying to survive. We are in the purple hue mode of the outdoor plants. We look good on the outside, but we're just in survival mode. So much so that we make surviving look good. Others see the purple hue and, as I did, see it as a sign of beauty when in actuality it is a sign of distress.

Be Willing to be uprooted.

The plant in my office, once it left its spot under the sign, has found itself in a different environment. It gets sun, but it is not beaten down by it. It gets water, but it isn’t constant. My office temperature is constant and moderate. There is no yo-yoing of temperatures that we have experienced this winter. So the plant in my office is different because it is not worried about where it will get its resources; it is not worried when it will get what it needs. This has freed it up to focus more on just growing. Just doing what it is called to do naturally and grow.

The challenge with us is that we are afraid to be uprooted because we are more concerned with the trauma of leaving the environment than with the potential to grow as we need to. We are afraid to move into the unfamiliar. So we remain trapped in survival mode. Because even though survival is hard, it is familiar. The problem is that growth often pushes us into the unfamiliar. Growth in life, love, and in Christ often requires us to go places and do things that we are not comfortable with. To grow, we often have to be plucked up and planted in a new environment.

Take inventory

Take inventory of your own life. Are we in a place where we are surviving or flourishing? Is the job we are in now the one we want to be in, or are we there because it is comfortable? The relationship we are in, are we there because we are growing, challenging, and pushing each other, or are we there because we figure it is better than nothing? The friend group we are in, are they there to help challenge us and help us to grow, or are they just there to kill time?  Are we at this church or ministry because we are being challenged and asked to grow in our relationship with Jesus and others, or are we there just because our grandmother’s name is on the front pew? Many of us are in places of comfort, but we do not realize that comfort can be a pretty prison.

Some things in life look good, but they actually trap us and keep us from our full potential. We can celebrate the fact that we are surviving so much that it keeps us from being willing to be uprooted. We would rather brag about our purple hue than see that our leaves are meant to be green and flourishing. The idea of being uprooted from our environment often keeps us from the places that God is trying to place us to flourish. So we remain pretty, but not seeing our full potential.

Conclusion

Though leaving your environment can be fraught with challenges and anxiety, we need to be willing to step out on faith. Faith is where we truly get to see God. God has things he wants to give us, but we often do not receive them because he will not send your blessing to the prison but to your penthouse. I know from personal experience that leaving the comfort of your surroundings can be hard, but I have seen what flourishing looks like, and it is greater than just surviving. The plant that would have been huddled now is reaching upward and outward.