summer

About 18 months ago, I was in a meeting with a client in Miami when the woman I was meeting with pulled a second person in the room. She announced she was leaving the company in two weeks, and this was her replacement. This was not entirely uncommon, but what happened next was.

I asked her what she was going to do, “Are you staying in the industry?”

“No,” she said, “I’m going back home (some country in South America) to take a sabbatical. I’m going to spend time with family and take time to figure out what I want to do.”

I started crying. Right there, in the middle of her office.

Her words were like a salve to my soul. That was exactly what I wanted. The only problem was, there’s no such thing as sabbaticals in Corporate America. You can’t just take months off of work to figure out what you want to do with your life. There are bills to pay and adult responsibilities to fulfill.

But this woman’s plan was like a refreshing oasis in the middle of my desert wilderness of exhaustion. I couldn’t stop thinking about her words, or the peaceful calm on her face when she said them.

I cried because I wanted to be that brave. I wanted to give myself that kind of time and space for my soul to breathe and my head to think clearly again. I wanted a sabbatical too. But that wasn’t realistic for me at the time.

There’s a song on the radio right now with the lyrics,

He makes a way where there ain’t no way,

let me tell you ‘bout my Jesus.

Ready?

Monday morning, May 2nd, 2022, I was a nervous wreck. The weekend prior, my husband and I had decided I would ask my company for some time off and a new position when I returned. With a knotted stomach and sweaty hands, I emailed my boss to ask if he had time for a call.

Once we connected, I told him everything that I had been wrestling with the last eight months. All my indecision, doubt, fears, uncertainty about what God was asking me to do. Travel or stay home? Work part time or full-time? Or, should I leave the workforce all together and “just” be a mom? What if I did that and hated it? How would I come back?

My company had already been SO gracious to me after my brother’s death, which happened in the middle of my maternity leave. They had given me additional time off for bereavement, and then more time again once I had been back to work a few months, when I was overwhelmed getting everything in order with my brother’s possessions and estate. And now I was asking for even more.

I couldn’t even verbalize what I needed because my head was so overloaded and scrambled I didn’t even know myself! I just knew SOMETHING had to give.

“Look,” I said, “I know there’s no such thing as sabbaticals in corporate America, but that’s what I’m asking for. I want a significant chunk of time off – like three months – so I can even have the time and space to breathe and think a clear thought about what my next steps should be. Basically, I want to take the Summer off.”

My boss said many empathetic and reassuring things to me that day. He was an absolute gem about the whole thing – a part I attribute to God. But the last words he said to me were, “As far as I know, we don’t have a sabbatical program (how he said that without laughing I’ll never know), what I imagine will happen is you will be separated on good terms and can come back anytime you’re ready, but hey, check with HR, they have more knowledge about what we can and can’t do than I do.”

My next phone call was to HR. I relayed the whole scenario and conversation with my boss. And when I was done, I kid you not, that woman opened her mouth and said, “Actually, we do have an administrative leave program. It’s kind of like a medical leave of absence, except with that you need a doctor’s note, with this, you just need your managers to sign off, which it sounds like they already have. And it lasts up to 12 weeks.”

Twelve weeks. Three months.

I was getting my sabbatical. I was going to get to take the Summer off to spend with my son and hear from God.

What. In. the. Actual. Was. Happening?

Sparing all the side-stories and details, suffice it to say, God’s provision went so far over and above what I could even imagine during this time. It was one blessing after another. More and more and more abundant overflow of His goodness than I would have ever asked for.

It was honestly bananas.

The one story I want to tell you about is this: The week that I called my boss – the VERY week – my husband got a phone call from a prospective client to do his largest project to date. If he won the job, it would net as much as his entire previous year’s income combined. And then, he got another call like that. And another. Three calls, in one week. Each would individually exceed the last year’s income. He ended up winning two of the three projects.

It’s been a year now, and the calls haven’t stopped coming.

What I didn’t know when I worked my last day on Friday, June 3rd, was that I wouldn’t go back to work at all.

My Summer never ended.

More on that later.

Now, here comes the rest of the song:

His love is strong and His grace is free

And the good news is I know that He

Can do for you what He’s done for me

Let me tell you ’bout my Jesus

And let my Jesus change your life.

My mom used to own and operate her own greenhouse. If having a green thumb is a thing, my mom is green head-to-toe – that woman can make anything grow anywhere!

Recently, while sitting on my deck looking at the shriveling petunias left over from our 4th of July party, I was saddened by the fact they were almost completely dead. Brown, dry, crisp. With only a hint of their former green life remaining. Not that I hadn’t been caring for them, but Petunias are annuals, which means they only bloom for one season, one year, and then they die. They will not regrow or bloom again next year, their little roots cannot survive the harsh winter in Ohio.

Even though they were practically dead already, I couldn’t bring myself to throw them away. I imagined them sitting in the bottom of my dumpster feeling rejected and discarded even though they had done nothing wrong. (I’m a bit irrational when it comes to any living thing….ask my husband about it sometime)

But that got me thinking about why God would create something so beautiful, something that brings me (and others) so much joy, to just then wither up and die.

One voice in my head wants to tell me it’s because God isn’t really good or kind or loving. That He is cruel or indifferent.

But another voice, the One I’ve come to hear more often and more clearly, tells me that’s not true.

So, I start there. With the things I know about God that are true:

God is good and kind and loving, and creative.

He makes beautiful things because He enjoys it and He enjoys bringing joy to His children.

God also does not create any living thing that does not reproduce or regenerate itself.

With those facts I concluded, petunias, and therefore all annuals, must actually be man made, genetically altered, for them to die off on the winter.

I text my mom asking if that was the case.

But before she could respond, I had a follow up thought. “Or, is it that every plant is really a perennial (meaning it never dies and/or does come back every year) in the right climate?”

My mom’s response came as her typical short-hand over text, “yes, to the second”.

So it turns out, there is actually no such thing as annuals. They are just perennials planted in the wrong place.

There have been countless persons make an exhaustive number of spiritual metaphors regarding plants and planting. Jesus himself not excluded. (See Matthew 13)

And I don’t doubt at some point in your life – probably more than once – you’ve seen some motivational poster with a striking image of budding flora and the words “bloom where your planted” overlayed.

But still as I snapped this picture this morning and thought of that conversation with my mom, words and ideas started flowing.

I’ve always interpretted Jesus’s parable of the sower as just throw seed everywhere and see what sticks. And that poster communicated just do your part to flourish as much as you possibly can wherever God has you planted in the moment. And that certainly is true and valid.

But I’d never thought about making sure you are darn-well planting in the right place before you start trying to grow something! Otherwise, after one magnificent season full of vigorous and vibrant color you might just shrivel up and die! (Metaphorically speaking, of course)

And then I realized, I think that’s exactly what I’ve been doing.

I think that’s a reality of what any of us are doing anytime we experience burnout in a given endeavor. We are trying to grow something somewhere in which God never created it to grow. We want to plant seeds where we want them to be planted, or just any place we can, without stopping to consider the cost of loss come end of season. So it may work for a season, but anytime we are working outside and against God’s intended design, we will ultimately shrivel back into the ground.

I wonder if it hurts God’s heart at all when we bring plants into climates where they can’t survive and then just dig them up and throw them out each year? (I have no idea if He gets as emotionally attached to inanimate objects as I do sometimes) but I can guarantee it hurts Him to watch us trying to force growth in our lives in the wrong territory.

I recommend before you start trying to grow something yourself, take a good look around and ask God if that’s the best place to try to plant a seed or develop roots.

Transplanting is hard. Landscapers literally use the word “trauma” to describe what happens to a plant that has been uprooted and planted somewhere new. But often, it’s what’s best for the health of the plant in the long run.

If where you are now you feel your petals are falling off and leaves are drying up, you might want to think of consulting the Master Gardener about a relocation to the plot he has picked out for you.