Change

Last night I had a dream.  You know those dreams that you have that bother you even while you are dreaming it? Well, it was that kind of dream.  I dreamt that Doug was asked to move to Seattle to teach there and we were going to have to leave Oklahoma. In the dream we were packing and driving away from our current position.  I remember that I cried and cried.  In fact in the dream I remember realizing that I was crying much more than I had when I had to leave Idaho.  Despite how sad I was I remember that our extended family was super excited to have us so much closer.            I woke up.


It was then that I realized how much I love being here in Oklahoma.


Last week our ward here in Oklahoma incurred some boundary changes.  CHANGE.  Many people in our ward were a bit melancholy today as we went to church, because they were missing some of their dear friends.    It didn't hurt our family too much, because we are still learning who is who in our ward.  In fact, there are less people now, so now I hold out some hope of getting to know everyone a little bit better and a little bit faster.

Perhaps this is what brought on the strange dream I had.

As we were in church today there were three speakers, all the members of our bishopric, our leaders.
One is a new friend who actually used to be the bishop of another ward (and by 'used to be', I mean up until last week. His family was affected by the re-allignment of the ward boundaries, and our Bishop called him in place of his counselor that was affected by the boundary change as well).  All the speakers today spoke about the same topic:  CHANGE.  Our new friend shared a conference talk that had a beautiful analogy about a root bound plant.  It is so great that I have decided to share it with you:

When a choice plant became root bound and began to deteriorate, a young friend of ours decided to transplant it to a larger container. Carefully he lifted the greenery from its small pot and put it into its larger home, trying to disturb the roots and soil as little as possible. The novice gardener watched and waited. To his dismay, the plant still struggled. Our friend expressed his frustration to an experienced gardener who offered his services. When the plant was placed in the gardener’s hands, he turned the pot upside down, pulled out the plant, shook the soil from the roots, and clipped and pulled all the stragglers from the root system. Replacing the plant into the pot, he vigorously pushed the soil tightly around the plant. Soon the plant took on new life and grew.

How often in life do we set our own roots into the soil of life and become root bound? We may treat ourselves too gently and defy anyone to disturb the soil or trim back our root system. Under these conditions we too must struggle to make progress. Oh, change is hard! Change can be rough.

The Lord does not want His church to become root bound and stagnant. Constant revelation through the prophets is needed for the growth of His kingdom.

There is nothing so unchanging, so inevitable as change itself. The things we see, touch, and feel are always changing. Relationships between friends, husband and wife, father and son, brother and sister are all dynamic, changing relationships. There is a constant that allows us to use change for our own good, and that constant is the revealed eternal truths of our Heavenly Father.

Marvin J. Ashton, Progress Through Change

If you are interested in reading the rest of this great talk, you can go here.

I suppose that the reason that I feel so impressed by this talk was because lately we, the Sturges Family, have gone through quite a bit of change.  We moved from our home in Melba.  Melba truly was our home in every way.  We put all of our heart and soul into that small community.  It hurt when we had to leave.  Melba helped Doug and I become who we are today.  Melba is a major part of our children's childhood.  

It was challenging for a while.  I have missed much of our Idaho life.  But, now that we have been here for three months I find that I am growing.  I am changing a bit.  I am becoming exactly what my Heavenly Father wants me to be. He is blessing me in so many ways.  Our children are also feeling the comfort of Heavenly Father's blessings.  It hurt some to have my roots pulled apart, but hopefully in a year or so I will be a more beautiful plant that has learned to take on new life and GROW.  

How have you found that CHANGE has blessed you?