Streams Planted By

Streams Planted By

Kaitlyn + Melissa's Scottsdale Adventure

There is a cheesy church song somewhere on a dusty CD and cassette player back in my home out in California. My mom, who used to listen to and dance to music while cleaning when I was growing up played this track in the house. And in the car. And while she cooked. Or even when she was in the garden, when it didn’t make sense because there was just music in the house she couldn’t have possibly heard!

But anyway, this track. 

It’s nostalgic for me. 

I’ve always thought it kind of corny- it’s just Psalm 1, sang in kind of a “Sunday School,” veggie tales (but less bouncy) vibe. But those songs seem to stay in your head, even a decade after you’ve heard the actual tune.

Lately, I’ve felt gaps in my soul; mourning over an incredible college community that is now a thousand miles away, and continuing without me. I know that the season is over, and anticipated it being bittersweet. But living the realities of the change have not made the anticipated events much easier to bear. 

As a young adult, working and in a new city, state, and job, I often feel like I’m lost in the shuffle. As an enneagram four, I’m not unfamiliar with this sentiment, but combined in the cocktail of my new season and the pain of so many good friends gone (at least in distance), the sentiment has indeed deepened. I go to work, and it’s hard not to value myself on what I can get done- they don’t know me for much else. I go to church, but I don’t have a place yet, and haven’t found gal pals that I can just run to get coffee while we all journal or chat. 

So I took a trip to Arizona to see one of my best friends, who I’ve known for ten years now- since the first week of sixth grade.

Laughing and chatting in person on her living room couch was just the familiarity my soul needed to refresh. Sometimes you just need it.

This morning when I woke up, I was finishing up a short morning yoga sequence, and as I breathed some closing breaths, I heard in the back of my head that corny churchy song. 

It reminded me that “he who delights in the law of the Lord, and meditates on it day and night (day and night, as the song repeats), he is like a tree (like a tree) planted by streams (streams) of water. That yields its fruit in season, and whose leaves do not wither. All that he does, prospers.” The truth and promise that song radiated in my heart this morning was sealed with the words, “His eye is on the sparrow.” Another old, old song.

To me, it was a reminder that as I breathe, God is with me in and out of seasons. That even if the world around me looses me in the shuffle- God hasn’t. I might not quite have the community to support me like before, but my proverbial leaves don’t have to wither because I am grounded in something that doesn’t depend on being planted in one location; it is dependent on being planted in this faith, grounded in who this incredible, good God is that I love and have loved for so long. He’s still kicking it with me! 

So thanks to Kaitlyn for letting me come out of my cycle of normal for a weekend, your hospitality and friendship means more than you could know.

And mom, I hope you’re playing that old CD somewhere in your white minivan that you still drive, or in the house while you garden. You’re a church song rockstar and I love you for it!

To everyone in good community- soak it in, and to us in transition- root down, root deep and know that His eye is on the sparrow, God is watching over you and knows right where you’re at. Hang in there, everything is a season.

XOXO,

Melissa Marie