Dormant

When you move into a retirement village housing addition like ours, you never know what you're going to get as far as vegetation is concerned.  I mean, yes, you can see the trees, the rose bushes in the back, and the non existent grass, but you never really know what you're going to get... or not get.  And we quickly realized that our previous owners cared little about grass and that we had the worst looking yard in the entire neighborhood.  No joke.  But, we have been pleasantly surprised by some plants that have come up that we didn't even know were there.  They had a round flower bed of nothing in the big middle of nothing that just baffled us.  But come Spring beautiful Easter lilies in various shades or bright orange and black cherry bloomed.  We decided to move some of the bulbs and they have multiplied incredibly in the two years we've lived her.  I love seeing the green sprigs emerge from the ground and watch daily for the blooms, not really remembering which color we transplanted to where until they bloom again. 
Maybe the reason I root for those lilies so strongly each year is because I feel like we're kindred spirits.  When we moved into this house, I felt like that empty flower bed; sun-bleached chip mulch surrounded by nothing but cheap edging that was brittle and cracked.  To make things worse, there was NOTHING inside of any use.  Sure there were things deep down in me, desires I knew had once been there, but none of it was evident.  Honestly, I didn't even know if it had been real.  But slowly, green began to push itself out of the ground.  Against what I had even believed for myself, God began growing things in my heart that I really didn't think were possible.  Forgiveness, understanding.  Then when it was evident that there was, in fact, fruit, God transplanted me to a place where I could be taken care of, multiplied, and nourished.  I might have been dormant for a season, but I wasn't dead.  I wasn't useless, I was simply changing. 
One of my friends likened it to this- between the time a caterpillar builds its cocoon and when it emerges a butterfly, it looks like neither.  The transformation process isn't always what we think it is.  That's where I was- in the middle of the transformation.  And just like you can't just glue wings on a caterpillar and call it a butterfly, God couldn't have just added something else to my life without transforming what was already there into something new. 
Did it hurt? Yep, even sucked at times.  Did I probably make it last a lot longer than it needed to.  Almost certainly.  I'm as stubborn as a mule.  But I just have to believe that there can't be house renovations without a little demolition.  And I am definitely happier about the remodeled me than the one before.