Bloom Where You Are Planted

“But in spite of what I said, you still would not trust the Lord, even though he always went ahead of you to find a place for you to camp. To show you the way, he went in front of you in a pillar of fire by night and in a pillar of cloud by day.”
— Deuteronomy 1:32–33

In September 2012, I drew a blue line across my driveway.

An actual line.

Across my actual driveway.

Because apparently when I need to learn something, a normal reminder isn’t sufficient. I need visual aids. 🤦‍♀️

I had been separated for about nine months. My husband had moved out at the beginning of January, and I was trying to figure out what life was supposed to look like now.

More importantly, I was trying to figure out what it really meant to trust God.

I had started meeting with my family pastor earlier that year. I was spending time in my Bible. I was praying. I was active in church. I loved Jesus.

But I was scared.

And somewhere along the way I had to admit something I didn’t particularly like admitting:

I trusted God.

Sort of.

I actually wrote about it on my old Journey to Ordinary blog on September 24, 2012:

“If I am being totally honest, my answer was yes Lord, BUT not completely. Not with everything, not with some of my super scary things…”

Well…

At least 41-year-old Jenni was honest. ❤️

I had been reading Beautiful Things Happen When a Woman Trusts God by Sheila Walsh, and God had been working on this trust issue for a while.

Eventually I realized I couldn’t keep saying I trusted God while also holding onto a little pile of things that were apparently excluded from the agreement.

You know…

Everything except these, Lord.

These are scary.

I’ll handle these.

Except I couldn’t.

So I drew a line across my driveway.

And in that same blog post, I wrote:

“I had to make the first step because faith means ACTION, so yesterday I drew my line! I will TRUST GOD with EVERYTHING and COMPLETELY.”

And then it rained.

My line disappeared.

So I drew it again.

Then eventually it disappeared again.

So I drew it again.

Honestly, that may be the most accurate picture of trusting God I’ve ever created.

Because I didn’t cross that line one Sunday afternoon in 2012 and magically never struggle with fear or control again.

It was a choice.

And then another choice.

And another.

Kind of like an alcoholic deciding not to drink today.

Today, I’m trusting God.

Tomorrow?

I’ll make that decision again.

Rain washed away the line?

Draw it again.

Fear showed up?

Draw it again.

Something happened that I couldn’t control?

Draw the line again.

Then the Scary Things Came Anyway 😭

Here’s the part I don’t think 41-year-old me fully understood when I wrote that blog post.

Trusting God with everything didn’t mean He was going to make sure none of the scary things happened…sigh

Because THEY did.

My marriage still ended.

Twenty years of my life had been spent with someone…separation and divorce were HARD. Even when ending a marriage is ultimately the right decision, that doesn’t make the ending painless or less devastating.

Would I have loved for God to fix my marriage?

Absolutely.

I would have loved for Him to fix my marriage and teach me everything He taught me through the ending of it too.

That seems like it would have been a perfectly acceptable option to me. 😂

But that isn’t what happened.

Trusting God didn’t mean He would keep the hard things from happening. I was beginning to learn that sometimes trusting Him meant walking straight through them.

The hard thing didn’t magically disappear.

God provided what I needed inside the hard thing.

And over the next fourteen years, I would see Him do that again and again and again.

One of the biggest examples came through Mable.

For a season, Mable was doing incredibly well. She was participating in an 18+ program through our school district, using transportation, attending a day program and even working a part-time job.

And then suddenly, she wasn’t.

Her autism-related behaviors became increasingly serious, and her eloping eventually reached a point where keeping her safe had to become the priority over everything else.

There was no fixing this one myself.

Believe me, I tried.

I couldn’t be a full-time classroom teacher and simultaneously be available whenever Mable needed me.

And I couldn’t simply quit my job.

Bills tend to be very unreasonable about accepting “We’re having a family crisis” as payment.

So there I was again.

Standing at another invisible blue line.

Provision Didn’t Arrive All at Once

First, my mom was able to help with Mable frequently enough that I could still work some days.

Because I could work some days, I could stretch my available leave.

Then FMLA gave me the ability to be away from my classroom when Mable needed me.

But I didn’t have enough paid leave to make it through the remainder of the school year.

And that’s when something happened that still makes me cry.

My friends and colleagues donated their own leave days to me.

I didn’t ask them.

They just did it.

Days they had earned.

Days that belonged to them.

They gave them to me so I could stay home and take care of my daughter without losing my paycheck.

God didn’t drop money from the sky.

He sent people.

Eventually, another provision came through ABA therapy.

It gave Mable a safe place with people equipped to support her and help her learn new coping strategies. It also meant I could return to my classroom knowing she was somewhere capable of meeting her needs.

And somehow, God provided a way for something incredibly expensive to be available to her.

But ABA was never going to be a permanent solution.

Eventually I knew something else:

I couldn’t stay in the classroom forever.

I knew I couldn’t keep trying to make Mable’s needs fit around my classroom schedule. I needed a job that allowed me to be her mom first.

So I resigned from teaching, June 2024, without another job lined up.

And surprisingly, I wasn’t scared.

By then, I had enough experiences with God’s faithfulness under my belt that I trusted Him.

I also knew I would continue receiving my ISD check throughout the summer and could plan for what came next.

I had been balling on a budget for fourteen years, after all. 😂

It wasn’t a permanent solution, but it gave me something incredibly valuable:

time.

Time to find the right job instead of grabbing whatever job appeared first.

A teacher friend had told me about her company and thought working from home would be a perfect fit for our situation.

I agreed.

Apparently the company needed a little more convincing.

I applied TWELVE TIMES.

Not once.

Not twice.

Twelve.

I didn’t have a spiritual crisis after application number seven.

I didn’t decide God had closed the door after number eleven.

My plan was extremely sophisticated:

Keep applying until they hire me. 😂

Apparently application number twelve was the perfect timing.

I started in October 2024.

I went one month without an ISD paycheck.

And the provision already in place meant we were okay.

And somehow, one of the scariest, hardest things became part of how He provided what we needed next.

That’s the part I can see now that I couldn’t possibly see while I was living it.

Did I desperately want God to take away the hard thing?

Of course I did.

Watching your child struggle is hard.

Watching your child be unsafe is terrifying.

I prayed like a maniac.

But even in the middle of the fear, I trusted Him.

Not because I knew everything was going to be okay.

Because I didn’t.

Not because I knew how the story would end.

Because I absolutely didn’t.

I trusted Him because by then I had too many experiences with God’s faithfulness not to trust Him.

Even if the worst thing happened, He was still God.

The woman who drew that blue line in 2012 wasn’t quite there yet.

She wanted to be.

She was trying to be.

She was drawing lines on her driveway and reading books and meeting with her pastor and basically telling God:

Okay. I’m going to trust You. Please help me actually do it.

And He did. 🌸

Not by giving me fourteen easy years.

But by proving Himself faithful through fourteen years of really hard ones.

I want to be very careful when I say that.

I don’t look backward at painful or dangerous circumstances and call them good.

I don’t believe every painful thing that happens is something God caused just so He could teach me a lesson.

Broken things are still broken.

Painful things still hurt.

Scary things are still scary.

But I absolutely believe God can take something I cannot fix and work inside it.

He can redeem it.

He can provide for it.

He can make a way where I cannot see one.

And sometimes the provision doesn’t look anything like what I was asking Him to provide.

Look at What He Built

Today I work from home.

I can be at Mable’s beck and call without wondering what is happening to my classroom, my students, my coworkers or my paycheck.

We live five minutes from a place where she is safe, supported and happy.

I have a house I love.

A garden I probably talk about entirely too much. 😉

Friends and family.

A women’s Bible study that grew out of connections made during this entire journey.

Time to study my Bible.

Time to take care of myself.

Time to spend with Mable.

Room for the two of us to go have fun and make memories together.

Do we still have problems?

Of course we do.

Autism didn’t disappear.

Life didn’t suddenly become easy.

I still worry. Ugggg…more than I should. 😭

I still occasionally try to fix things myself before remembering that perhaps I should consult God first…sigh 🤦‍♀️

The marching band still likes to warm up from time to time.

But there isn’t a day that goes by that I’m not aware of how much we’ve been given.

I am blessed beyond measure. ❤️

And here’s the crazy part:

If God had simply answered my prayers years ago by making the hard thing disappear, I don’t know that I would have this life. I am almost certain I wouldn’t.

I might still be standing in a classroom.

I might still be missing experiences with Mable because my job couldn’t accommodate what she needed.

There might be no time for Bible study.

No gym.

No house five minutes away.

No life that allows me to be both Mable’s mom and financially provide for us without constantly feeling like one responsibility is stealing me from the other.

Younger me would never have chosen the road that brought us here.

Knowing what I know now…I wouldn’t change any of it at all.

One of my favorite pastors, Pastor Bill Ramsey, often says something that has stuck with me:

“If you knew what God knew, you would want what God wants for your life.”

I think I’m finally beginning to understand what he means.

The Line Is Still There

Not literally anymore.

I’m pretty sure that blue line disappeared from that old driveway a very long time ago.

But I look at the picture now and I still recognize the woman who drew it.

I’m still her.

I still need frequent reminders.

I still have to choose trust.

I still don’t know what God is doing most of the time.

The difference is that I’m not nearly as scared anymore about what trusting Him might mean.

Because now I have fourteen years of evidence.

In 2012, I read that God went ahead of His people and showed them the way.

I wanted desperately to believe He would do the same for me.

Today?

I know He does.

I can look backward and see places He was preparing before I even knew I would need them.

People were already there.

Provision was already there.

The next step was already there.

Not always early.

Certainly not according to my preferred schedule. 🤣

But there.

So if I could stand in that driveway with 41-year-old Jenni for just a minute, I think I’d point at her blue line and tell her:

Keep drawing it.

The rain is going to wash it away sometimes.

Fear will too.

So will heartbreak.

And there are some really scary things ahead that I’m not going to tell you about.

But keep drawing the line.

Because God isn’t promising that every scary thing will stay on the other side of it.

He’s going to show you that He can be trusted when you have to walk through them.

And fourteen years from now?

You’re still going to be choosing Him.

You’re just going to be a lot less scared about what that means.

Because by then you’ll know:

God’s got this.

He’s probably not going to tell you the plan, though. 🤦‍♀️

Apparently some things never change.

I’m glad you’re here.
— Jenni 🌸

Even If – Mercy Me