When Debbie and I were working on our plans for our house in Chico, I paid special attention to the windows over the kitchen sink. Much of the reason for the orientation of our house had to do with the kitchen windows. Our kitchen sink was in a corner with windows on each side facing East and South. The view looked out over Almond orchards and empty fields and it was planned that way. As much as we liked our neighbors, this view was reserved for green grass and almond blossoms. Both of us loved the view at the kitchen sink.
Over the course of a few years we learned something unexpected about this place behind the kitchen sink. It started with the gift of an orchid. It was from a preschool parent for Debbie’s 40th birthday. She decided that the empty space behind the kitchen sink would be the perfect place for it. That orchid lived for another 10 years in that place. It bloomed at least once a year (sometimes twice) and like all orchids the blooms lasted for months.
Over the years the orchid collection grew. Each new gift of an orchid was placed behind the kitchen sink and they all seemed to thrive there. Both my mother and mother-in-law would pass on their orchids to us after their blooms died off. Debbie would tend to them and place them behind the kitchen sink and invariably after a bit of time they would send up a new stalk of flowers. We almost always had at least one orchid blooming there in the window. A few years ago we counted the orchids. We had 10 of them and at that time not a single flower. This was a bit unusual. As time went by we noticed that they all seemed to be sending up stalks of budding flowers at the same time. We eventually had all 10 of our orchids in full bloom around our kitchen sink windows.
I don’t often think about things such as plants and flowers, but I began to wonder if I’m more than a little like one of those orchids in our kitchen window. Could it be that there is a place where I grow and thrive more than any other? A place where the sun shines just the right amount, the air is still and I’m given just the right amount of water to grow? Finding such a place, then, would be the key to a life lived in full bloom, wouldn’t it?
I believe there is such a place. It is a place of God’s choosing, for He knows the place where the air is still and the sun shines just the right amount. Our place may not be the corner window of God’s kitchen, but He knows just the place for each of us to grow, thrive and bloom into what we were meant to be. Letting God find that place for you, and plant you there, may be one of the hardest things you ever do. But tell me, who knows better the place where we can live in full bloom than the Creator Himself? Trust Him. He wants nothing more than to see you grow gloriously, flowering in the majesty He made you for.
“I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.”
John 10:10
God bless,
Rick Nelson
530-588-4730
rick.nelson@myuja.org