Seed to Sequoia

As a child, I had an insatiable desire to know what the future held for me. I thought I knew what my adult life would be like. Whenever I was asked by adults what I wanted to be when I grew up, I’d always say doctor. When asked why my answer would always include anecdotes about money and then preceded by my desire to save lives. By nature, I am an extremely calculated person. All my life, I’ve tried to cast a safety blanket on my life’s significant events—a series of carefully executed decisions, plans, moves that were supposed to give me the results that I desired. When I convinced myself that I wanted to be a doctor, I studied the lives of those who looked like me. If they attended a specific program, I looked at the requirements of schools they attended, which enrichment programs and clubs they were a part of, what kind of people were in their network, and tried to replicate that. This “study guide” became incredibly time-consuming and costly—for me—because as I know now, this person I was so desperately trying to become, was simply not the person God created me to be. 

I spent many of my younger years beating myself up when things didn’t go my way and striving to the point of exhaustion and frustration. Every time a door closed on me, my natural response was to go back to my drawing board to figure it out-- on my own. It was my mission to attend more networking sessions, pick up more classes, and more jobs that did not bring me joy. I did not make it a priority of mine to consult with God and perhaps consider what His purpose for me looked like. I did not come to God with my concerns or frustrations. I tried so hard to find a way and make a way by any means necessary. This kind of striving, which may not necessarily align with God’s will for us, sometimes leads us to a place where we are distracted from God’s purpose for our lives, discouraged by our relationship with God and others. This is not God’s plans for us. Jeremiah 29:11 reminds us that God’s plans for us are one of total and complete abundance: “11 For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”

I think the key point in this scripture is to consider that these are God’s plans for us and not our plans. It is easy to fall into the trap of thinking about all of the things we want to accomplish in our lives and try to fit it into our human timelines, sometimes forcibly. In my short time of doing intense relationship-building with God, I’ve learned this one truth: God doesn’t work like this. God does not function according to our timelines. He doesn’t care about our carefully laminated five or 10-year plans, especially if they do not fit into His plans for us. As Christians, we live individual lives that are also simultaneously (and fortunately) interconnected with the lives of others. It is crucial for us never to lose sight of how we are interchangeably contributing to the ebb and flow of God’s will for each other -- think about this when you wonder what your purpose is. Salvation is not an individual sport -- we are not here for us alone. 

One of the hardest things I’ve had to do in the past is to relinquish control of the things that did not fit in God’s kingdom vision for me, to give God complete oversight of my life, and my desire to execute every aspect of my life to perfection. It took an incredible amount of courage to give God my fears of the unknown-- from my relationships with others, to my career, the things I thought I was an expert of, the salary I assumed would bring me happiness. It was challenging to do so because I believed those things would make me feel complete. I saw that blueprint of my life as the seed I needed to grow a giant tree, a powerful, established, a nearly indestructible figure that would hopefully provide shade and fruit for generations. In my head, this was my legacy; how could I let that wither away? I desperately wanted the tree, but I did not value the seed. I did not care about the seed, or the time and care it took to grow into anything. I expected my blueprints and plans to pan out the way I expected them to, because I knew it worked for someone else. God had different plans for me. He always does. 

Sometimes our imagined timelines do not align with God’s timelines for us, and that can be for several reasons. It may be that God knows where we are most needed at a specific time, He may see a gift in us that can only exist and be amplified in certain spaces; or simply that we are asked to wait a bit longer for God’s harvest of promise for us. None of this subtracts from God’s promise of breakthrough in our lives. This period of breakthrough is preceded often by years of disciplined faith and patience; confidence and faith in knowing that God has control and His plans will far exceed our expectations, and patience to commit to grounding ourselves in Him while we wait.

God’s work in my life is by no means a large coniferous giant sequoia tree, at least not yet. I look back at the instances I consider failures, disappointments, and heartbreaks and see imprints of God all over them. What I used to consider as my “life’s setbacks,” I know God considers a piece of His promise, the part of the seed that was undoubtedly necessary for my growth. What I considered ruins, God considered nutrients for my seedling; what I considered complete heartbreak undeniably became my testimony. What to my eye looked like a reflection of darkness, was the place that God planted me in to grow, in purpose and on purpose. Sometimes, we forget that seeds need to be planted into a dark space like soil to break, sprout, and germinate into the beautiful structures that we know of as trees. Our lives are a true reflection of this process: from the planting of the seed, to being broken in darkness, then waiting patiently until the first sprout fights its way above ground, to finally flourishing in God-ordained fruitful purpose. At the heart of God’s will for us is a life of fruitful faith; one where we are to trust in Him wholly; where we can trade our plans for His, one where we can put every single aspect of our lives and the people we want to be so that we can become less, and He can become greater.

Trust, patience, faith.