Welcome to The Wildroot Parables weekly discussions! This is where we can come together as a community and have real talk with one another: open, honest, gracious, and curious.
This is YOUR space to discuss with each other, not just engage with me! Because of this, SAFE SHARING is my highest priority. If you are not engaging safely and with grace with others, you will have to leave. Period.
Thank you for entering this space with care!
In our devotional on Monday we discussed “blooming where you’re planted”, and the concept of soil—our circumstances as well as our inner life “environment”—that is not supportive of our growth…or even actively hostile to our thriving.
My question is: What does “healthy” soil look like to you? What does “hostile” soil look like? Be specific! There’s no right/wrong answer!
I love this question! I can’t help but think how different plants need different kinds of soil - what is healthy for a succulent is too dry (& hostile) for others. Humans are the same way. Personally, I need space and solitude more than others to thrive. I healed so much and thrived during the pandemic because it gave me what I craved. Slow living with a light calendar load. Healthy soil for me allows me room to breathe & process, but I know plenty of other people who struggled in the soil of the pandemic, that soil was more hostile to their thriving.
Love that! “Healthy soil for me”! And I can agree with that need for time to breathe and process. Healthy soil for me feels like no pressure to pretend or perform. I have received the perfect container to develop a “valve” of my own for the pressure that was placed upon me growing up (to “do the right thing” which almost always meant putting my needs well behind what others wanted— now I know that is too much to ask of me). We lost work/home during the first Lockdown leading to a need to regroup financially. My dad graciously offered that we move in with him and my mom in 2020. Now I’ve been given the chance to raise my son in the very house where developmental trauma (though obviously unintended) happened to me. Hostile soil to me, looks like my mothering being unsupported by my mom who really just does not understand how I experienced my own childhood and how it affected my mothering. And yet I know that Life is transforming me by the renewing my mind. I have tried to explain and have now come to realise that my viewpoint only offends her, so I dig deeper into why I’m mothering without spanking and with intention on Loving-kindness and I uncover Truth for my own self. I wish I could talk openly with her, but I have noticed patterns of behaviour that tell me this is not possible now. Maybe it’s too much to ask of her. I do so hope to meet her on distant shores of eternity where our differences are not so stark in contrast because Christ will outshine them. For now, it’s awkward and the words between us are nearly always misunderstood. It is God’s Grace that I am no longer internalising the misunderstanding as my fault when I’ve known myself to be true. It is to His glory that I can honestly see the problem as though we are on the outside of it and that she is not the problem. Our struggle is not against flesh and blood after all.
Such wise words!! Thank you for sharing that. “On distant shores of eternity where our differences are not so stark in contrast because Christ will outshine them” -- Oooof, so good, such Truth! I look forward to that day.
I am as well! And I feel very grateful for this container to write these thoughts that I’ve been processing for enough time now and to let them go. This is not my whole testimony. This is the harvest of this season. God be praised!
I love this question! I can’t help but think how different plants need different kinds of soil - what is healthy for a succulent is too dry (& hostile) for others. Humans are the same way. Personally, I need space and solitude more than others to thrive. I healed so much and thrived during the pandemic because it gave me what I craved. Slow living with a light calendar load. Healthy soil for me allows me room to breathe & process, but I know plenty of other people who struggled in the soil of the pandemic, that soil was more hostile to their thriving.
Love that! “Healthy soil for me”! And I can agree with that need for time to breathe and process. Healthy soil for me feels like no pressure to pretend or perform. I have received the perfect container to develop a “valve” of my own for the pressure that was placed upon me growing up (to “do the right thing” which almost always meant putting my needs well behind what others wanted— now I know that is too much to ask of me). We lost work/home during the first Lockdown leading to a need to regroup financially. My dad graciously offered that we move in with him and my mom in 2020. Now I’ve been given the chance to raise my son in the very house where developmental trauma (though obviously unintended) happened to me. Hostile soil to me, looks like my mothering being unsupported by my mom who really just does not understand how I experienced my own childhood and how it affected my mothering. And yet I know that Life is transforming me by the renewing my mind. I have tried to explain and have now come to realise that my viewpoint only offends her, so I dig deeper into why I’m mothering without spanking and with intention on Loving-kindness and I uncover Truth for my own self. I wish I could talk openly with her, but I have noticed patterns of behaviour that tell me this is not possible now. Maybe it’s too much to ask of her. I do so hope to meet her on distant shores of eternity where our differences are not so stark in contrast because Christ will outshine them. For now, it’s awkward and the words between us are nearly always misunderstood. It is God’s Grace that I am no longer internalising the misunderstanding as my fault when I’ve known myself to be true. It is to His glory that I can honestly see the problem as though we are on the outside of it and that she is not the problem. Our struggle is not against flesh and blood after all.
Such wise words!! Thank you for sharing that. “On distant shores of eternity where our differences are not so stark in contrast because Christ will outshine them” -- Oooof, so good, such Truth! I look forward to that day.
I am as well! And I feel very grateful for this container to write these thoughts that I’ve been processing for enough time now and to let them go. This is not my whole testimony. This is the harvest of this season. God be praised!