The early spring was colder and rainier than previous springs we’ve had here in Nashville. Winter was more intense too—six inches of snow in January broke a ten-year record for this southern state. One gloomy afternoon in late April, I wondered aloud about the weather and what it meant for the coming summer to the women in the flowershop where I worked.
“It’s going to be a Blackberry Summer,” one of them said. “These cool temps will be good for the berry bushes in a few months. Just you wait.”
I smiled, hopeful about the berry vines my husband and our housemate planted when we moved in, nearly two years ago. We were disappointed when they yielded no fruit last summer. Did we plant them in the wrong spot? Was the soil too hard? Maybe they just needed a year to acclimate to their surroundings, grow some roots and steady themselves against the fence in the backyard.
The cooler temps eventually gave way to the notorious Tennessee heat and humidity. Tiny green knots of fruit tinged with red appeared on a day when we weren’t looking for them. Just this afternoon, I walked out to the backyard to find a single raspberry, bright and proud, all by itself. I tugged, but she clung to the vine. Almost ready to pluck, but not quite.
If it’s cliché, I don’t care: I am the raspberry bush.
Maybe you are too. Maybe we all are.
We uproot ourselves, in more ways than one. From places, yes, but also from beliefs and ideas. Inevitably, there are seasons where we mistake the lack of fruit for failure. We wonder if we’ve planted ourselves in the wrong spot, or if the soil is too hard. We resent the brutal seasons, the relentless cold and rain.
What we really need is time. Time to acclimate. Time to mature. Time to grow roots.
It’s as much about the outward signs—financial stability, career progress, personal achievements, and healthy relationships—as it is about the inward stuff: faith, hope, peace.
It’s about what we believe to be true of ourselves, as people.
When everything gets uprooted, when we endure the hard seasons, can we come back to life?
Can we grow from it?
Are we capable of transformation?
The answer is always yes. The variable is time.
If you’ve uprooted yourself recently, and are looking around at your life and what you see is a barren wasteland, hold out hope. Maybe you moved to a new city, like me, and it’s taking a long time to feel stable. Maybe you’ve done the painful work of pruning back a lot of harmful beliefs and feel completely naked. Maybe you’ve removed yourself from a harmful environment and don’t know where you will put your roots.
But here is a truth ripe for the picking:
You are a resurrection waiting to happen. Just you wait.
I’m a writer and blogger at at bethanysuckrow.com, where I shares both prose and poetry on faith, grace, grief and hope. I am currently working on my first book, a memoir about losing my mother to cancer. My musician-husband, Matt, and I live in transition as we move our life from the Chicago suburbs to Nashville.
