The Blessing of Staying

Not the particular species or type, per say – but I knew these flowers.  I posted a picture almost identical to this one about this time last year after delighting over such delicate displays of God’s creativity, right here in my front yard.  This year, the sight of these familiar flowers nearly brought me to tears, and at first I wasn’t quite sure why.  Later that evening, I realized that for me the familiar sight of these wildflowers blooming again in the exact same spot of my familiar front yard felt like a blessing of stability, security, and sameness.  The blessing of staying.

You see, the last weekend of January marked a significant anniversary for me.  Sara and I joked that it was our roommate-iversary over a crockpot lunch with some college students we’d welcomed over from church.   But more significantly, this is the first time that I have called the same place “home” for more than a year since I was 18 years old and my parents helped me move into Witherspoon Hall for my freshman year of college.

For the first time in nearly 8 years, I have come home to the same bed, in the same room, in the same house for more than 365 consecutive days.

All of my fellow wanderers out there, you know what a significant statement that is.  But what you may not understand – what I hardly expected to find myself thinking – is that this is a good thing.  I am still a stranger in this world (Hebrews 11:13), but even sojourners have permission to temporarily settle in the land they are traveling through.  How else are we to have a lasting impact on the people that inhabit the stops along our path?  And so right now, I am grateful for the stability, predictability, and steadiness of this season.  Most especially, I am grateful for the blessing of staying.

The blessing of staying is seeing the same yellow flowers bloom in the same corner of your front yard year after year.  It’s having a favorite coffee shop where nearly all of the baristas know you by name.  It means rarely needing your GPS because you’ve finally learned the streets of this town like the back of your own hand.  The blessings of staying is an opportunity to build ever-deepening relationships with people around you because they are the ones that are right in front of you day after day, bearing witness to the most ordinary parts of your story that you don’t yet realize are having a profound impact on the person you are becoming.  It means bearing witness to their stories as well.

The blessing of staying means buying some furniture, planting a garden, putting nails in the wall – really investing in a place – because you have reason to hope that you will enjoy the beauty of that same small corner of this big, wide world for many days to come.

And you know what else I noticed as I snapped picture after picture of those golden emblems of this new blessing I am discovering?  Last year, there was just one bloom on each plant.  But this year?  There were 2, 3, 4, even 5!  The blessing of staying is that we have time to grow in ways that just aren’t possible when we keep uprooting the tender shoots of our souls so frequently.  I think the unexpected blessing of staying just might mean that a unique form of beauty doesn’t just mature, it multiplies.

with love and wanderlust (even in the staying),

Cassady