Uprooted. Transplanted. 

Both words seem too gentle to describe the feeling of being ripped out of your familiar, comfortable niche and thrust into the unknown. As plants and trees are transplanted for landscaping, people are physically transplanted to different locations for jobs, school, and relationships. Unlike the trees and plants, we as humans experience mental and emotional uprootings that can occur with the physical act of moving or the mental act of moving on from relationships, behaviors, patterns of thought, communities, committees, etc. 

 I can count the number of times I’ve been physically uprooted. (It’s six for those who are curious.). The first time occurred at age seven when I moved from Kansas which held my family and my favorite place, my grandparents’ farm, to the unknown Oklahoma.  Visiting the farm and my grandparents was no longer a daily or even a weekly occurrence. Eventually, I adjusted and grew. At age fifteen, I was uprooted again and moved from Oklahoma to Kentucky. As a shy sophomore girl, it felt impossible to rebuild friendships or regrow roots. My feet were planted in Kentucky, but my heart remained in Oklahoma.

The number of emotional or mental uprootings I’ve experienced is too many to count. From my parents’ divorce to friendships beginning and ending to adjusting to married life to becoming a parent, grieving lost loved ones; each event caused uncertainty, doubts, fears, questions. So often, my brain wanted to move on while my heart remained in the past mourning the plans I had made or relationships lost.

Remain Planted in the Lord.

Friends, plant yourself in the Lord. Keep your heart in Him. Even amidst the shaky soil and uneven ground of life’s uprootings, those who are planted in the house of the Lord will FLOURISH (responsorial psalm). Root yourselves in prayer. Nourish yourselves with sacred scripture. Just as trees need the sun to grow, we need the SON for our spiritual growth. Visit Him in the Blessed Sacrament, receive Him in Holy Communion, let Him be your rock, your certainty, in the turbulence of life’s uprootings. Remember, the Lord lifts high the lowly tree and makes the withered tree bloom (Ezekiel). Friend, you were made to bloom.