As I’m sitting on my back porch looking at these succulents I’m trying to keep alive, I realize I have very little knowledge about plants. When I bought my original succulents about a year ago, I couldn’t keep them in full sun so I put them as close as I could. Luckily I have friends who are quite the plant enthusiasts, so when one of my my short, squat, beautiful succulents started to stretch further and further out of the planter, one friend explained that it was reaching for more light.

This little tidbit of information didn’t necessarily help me to provide more light, but it did inform me that the plant was adapting to survive. So from that plant, I started propagating tiny “leggy” succulents from inside all winter long. In the partly sun/partly shade environment, those tiny succulent adapted just as the original one did; each trying to reach more sun.

Now that it’s spring and me being the budding plant mom that I am, I recently decided to set a couple of my new little succulent planters on the ledge of the porch in full sun and warmth. I thought I was doing my plants a giant favor, allowing them to thrive in the environment they were always meant to be in.

As I’ve been observing the past few days, that is simply not the case. I’m standing here watching the stems on my tiny succulent babies start to shrivel up, and it seems as though the environment I thought would save the succulents is having the opposite effect. Due to the adaptations the succulents made in order to survive in the shade, when thrust into a new (and even better) environment, those adaptions are becoming their ultimate downfall preventing them from thriving where they were always meant to be.

Isn’t this just like me? While I was made to thrive and live in community and possess an endless amount of joy and peace and patience and contentment in my walk of faith and through life in general, I’ve found myself thrust into environments that don’t allow for a whimsical, carefree existence all the time. I’ve had trust broken in friendships seemingly out of nowhere, I’ve battled suffocating times of depression and anxiety, I’ve been blindsided by tragedy and covered by grief. Each and every one of these seasons has triggered me to adapt my thoughts, feelings, and life in general just to survive.

I’m not necessarily condemning these adaptations; I’m pretty convinced that they helped me make it through those seasons and prevented further pain in the moment. I wasn’t quite as open as I had grown to be with everyone, I allowed the grief and pain to mold me into a mom who longs to honor her daughter’s memory, and I’ve been vigilant in trying to care for our second child, learning from oversights I might have made with our first. In context and in temporary circumstances, these adaptions are a large part of why I’m alive today, but as I’ve transitioned to a new season, I’ve found that they are a double edged-sword. In my dark, shady seasons, I gathered tools to cope that later might have turned into weapons of self-destruction when stepping into the next.

That sounds dramatic, but in particular moments, that rings very true for me. I’ve been frustrated with myself and the amount of social anxiety (and anxiety in general) I’ve had to battle over the past couple years. I’ve chosen to sit in a cage of solitude disguised as “safety” over and over and over again. Just as my succulents sitting on the edge, my short term solutions to immediate crisis have affected the long term more that I meant for them to.

So what do I do from here? Specifically for my succulents, I’m about to snip off the shriveled stems and start fresh by replanting the still healthy tips in the sunny soil. And specifically for me, I take one step single step of faith in the face of my screaming distrust and anxiety and gradually allow roots of trust to begin to grow as slowly as they need to. I take Bennett for a walk on the trail by myself…during a time when I know it will be busy. I don’t give myself the option to back out of a game night with friends because the value of social interaction and relationship are worth so much more than the risk of awkward interactions and sacrifice of my comfort zone.

It’s amazing what Jesus can reveal to me about my character and struggles through the smallest of projects. All the while I trust that He’ll continue to walk me through this new season of growth just as he sat with me through my season of shadows.