To understand where I am today, I begin by telling you where I came from. My story always seems to carry a certain amount of discontent; why am I here and not there, what if I had been there, instead of here? Perhaps, this is the human condition or a restlessness that is a peculiar way of life for me. Contentment is easier to come by since retirement but, I think I will always be looking for one more adventure, one more reason to laugh, and one more, just one more dance.

“Therefore we are always confident and know that as long as we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord.” 2 Corinthians 5:6 NIV

I gave the heuchera the same treatment as its fancy cousins in the narrow bed that borders the deck in my back yard but the little lime green beauty didn’t respond. It looked underdeveloped, wimpy and sad. But, before I dug it up and gave it last rites in the compost bin, I decided to give it one last, one last chance. I transplanted it a mere four feet over, next to the aggregate planter that held my pride and joy, Japanese maple.

Next to the planter it was cooler, shadier, and protected. Essentially, I put the ailing heuchera in the plant hospital and waited. It still received the same care as its more robust cousins but, surprisingly, as the weeks passed through the summer its leaves crisped up, like lovely summer lettuce. It filled out into a dense mound and began to thrive. There was no explanation, nothing concrete to point to, but the heuchera became the show-off of the flowerbed.

I’ll call her she, because she began to express her true, authentic personality, glowing with good health and vitality. In her new space she found her comfort zone, the place she had always belonged, but I, her gardener and tender of her life, hadn’t realized it. 

I have so many times felt like that heuchera, that I was in the wrong spot in the garden. In my case, the transplant was not to the ideal spot for sun, water, and shelter, but a rocky place, where the wind blew too hard and the sun burned. My transplants were uncomfortable, not always fulfilling to my spirit.

Some transplants were out of my control and some were my own poor judgment, because I turned a deaf ear to the whisperings of the Holy Spirit.

Some transplants caused me to grow stronger in order to keep my roots and maintain my balance. Like a scrubby pine growing in the cleft of a rock, I bore down, leaned into the wind, and toughened my bark.

And, some transplants just left me longing for softer soil, warmer winds, and thirsting for a cool drink of water. A sandy beach would be nice. I knew where I wanted to be but, like the little heuchera, was unable to transplant myself.

I look to the Master Gardener to change my circumstances but instead, His sovereign plan, mysterious and wondrous, nurtures me where I am as I strive to express my true, authentic personality, to glow with spiritual health and vitality. I yearn for my comfort zone but wonder if I was created to find such a place this side of heaven.

The gumbo of Montana and red Oklahoma clay.

My parents were born and raised in Oklahoma and all my relatives lived in that warmer clime. Dad’s job, working in the oil business, forced relocations creeping northward. My earliest memories were in Wyoming, then to the cold prairies of Montana. 

Our little town sat at the edge of the Badlands, on a bluff above the Yellowstone River. 

Badlands, eroded, gutted, deep gullies, scarred. Hilly fingers reach into my neighborhood; Hungry Joe was my back yard. A sudden summer storm sent silt flowing down the hill into the yard, covering the patio in sludge, leaving behind a hill of “gumbo,” an impenetrable mound. After a deluge we used a snow shovel to scrape the patio clean. 

Hungry Joe; I always thought he must be a local Indian, a legend of lore. But, Hungry Joe is a white guy, who operated the ferry that crisscrossed the Yellowstone River, muddy and swift. He got his name because at noon, no matter the circumstances, no matter who might be waiting transport, Joe walked away in search of his lunch. Hungry Joe.

Little grows in the Badlands, concealing secret dinosaur history. My brother hiked into the hills with an archeological hammer and returned with bone fragments, petrified clusters of tiny seashells, evidence of past Cretaceous sea beds, an amateur paleontologist. He removed his clothes from the drawers, stashed them in his closet, to make room to display his treasures. 

And God said, “Let the waters below the heavens be gathered into one place, and let the dry land appear”; and it was so. Gen 1:9 NASB 

The Yellowstone River, thick and swift, home to pre-historic Paddlefish, with ugly snout but prized for its roe.  In winter the river freezes over solid, a mini ice age. Come the spring thaw, huge chunks break up, like a shotgun going off, crash to shore and pile up, with glacier-like power, moving trees, trucks, anything in its path.

Winter roars onto the bare prairie too soon in a rush of cold wind and snow. Icy grains scour low across the highway and fields of stubble. Forty below. Ice crystals glint in the hard, cold air; sundogs run rings around the early morning sun. Forty below. Winter stays too long, nerves fray, and red Oklahoma clay beckons.

Each summer we leave the Montana gumbo, our southern migration, in search of red Oklahoma clay. The land is softer, genteel, tropical, the air dense with heat and humidity, and cicada vibration, Oklahoma’s own Cretaceous remnant. Vegetation is a thick blanket, kudzu folding over in its land flow.

Then God said, “Let the earth sprout vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees bearing fruit after their kind, with seed in them, on the earth”, and it was so. Gen 1:11 NASB

Life is slower, kinder; family waits to surround, embrace. I only saw Oklahoma in the summer so the other seasons didn’t exist. In my mind, it was always summer in Oklahoma.

Fans hummed in every room day and night. We slept uncovered, but for our sweat in the thick darkness. Grandpa lays on a cot in the back screened-in porch, in his boxer shorts, listening quietly to baseball on the radio. I knew he was there but the inky night concealed him.

By day, Grandpa trudged around in denim overalls, tobacco pouch in his pocket, oilcan in hand. I followed him around to see what develops. 

He cut off a plug of tobacco and popped it in his mouth, offering a plug to me, “Hey, Sis, wanna chew?” for the fun of hearing my shrill little girl squeal, “Eww, Grandpa, that’s gross!” 

The mysterious oilcan squirted slugs and snails with kerosene; they writhed and spasmed before turning to a slimy mess.

Later, I followed Grandpa to the garden, the sun high overhead, saltshaker in hand, to indulge in warm, ripe tomatoes, salty brine awakening the taste buds. Bees, butterflies, and a little girl moved slowly in the drowsy heat.

A bunker burrows into the back yard, deep, cool and musty, filled with Grandma’s canned goods, and ready for disaster. We were in tornado alley and always on the lookout. Grandma was terrified of the beast storms, refusing to live in any house that did not have a storm shelter. I never experienced a tornado but the subterranean cave thrilled and chilled.

Two soils, so very different; one feels foreign and unfriendly, the other the scent of a home I had never lived in. Yet, I grew up in the foreign but longed for the familiar I’d never known. Is it the longing for Oklahoma or just the Home yet to come?