Growing in Hard Seasons - You Must Grow Before Can You Bloom

For most of my life, I thought growing meant moving. Expanding. Growing meant getting bigger and better and learning more and moving further faster. 

I thought it looked like productivity—more pieces made, more skills learned, more things checked off a list. I thought if I was growing, I would be able to see it, and it would always feel like momentum. It does to some degree, I guess, but not until I was expected to GROW personally, when life got a bit messy, did it begin to make sense in a different way.

This week in the studio, I didn't make much; I cleaned. My space looked exactly how I felt on the inside, and it was time to make things right!

It was time to sort through my heart and my workspace. I packed away things I had accumulated over months and years and either discarded them or found them new places to live. I gathered all the unglazed ceramic pieces to decide if I should follow through and finish them or retire them to the garbage. In essence, I organized the space to facilitate the creation of something new... to prepare for the "bloom."

And somewhere in the middle of all that ordinary work, I realized: this is what growing truly looks like, for me, in this season ... "tending." Caring for the things that are present in this season, and with gratitude for it all, keeping my eyes out for the bloom. 

Have you ever thought, "Oh, that's easy for you to say..." when noticing another person's successes, only to then reflect on things in your own life that prevent you from living the same? Sometimes, we focus on other people's blooming season and forget they also had to go through a growing season. Those difficult times, the slow, challenging moments, the failed attempts, and the most active—yet outwardly inactive—times of waiting. We have all had these cycles in our lives. 

There is a story I wrote about a vine that grew faithfully for years in an open field with no fruit to show for it. The gardener continued to prune and tend the vine—season after season he tended—and eventually, the vine noticed the gardener and understood: the fruit was not the point of the faithfulness. The faithfulness, the patience, and the waiting were the REAL growing points that made the root strong enough to sustain all the fruit it wanted to bear.

I think that is what God has been trying to show me about this season, too. Not every chapter, not every piece of pottery, has an easy and beautiful "reveal." Some chapters are preparation for the reveal. And the work of those chapters—the quiet, unglamorous, no-one-is-watching work—are the moments of growing. These moments need to happen, and they count!

"And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up," Galatians 6:9 reads differently when you are sitting in a growing season rather than a bloom or harvest season. 

This season in the studio reminds me that every piece, every moment of tending, has purpose. The same is true for our lives. Even when growth feels slow or unseen, if we keep making a life of meaning and trust the One tending alongside us, our growing seasons are shaping what will bloom in their perfect time.

As we tend our own studios—our hearts, our work, our lives—may we trust the quiet, faithful moments of growth, knowing that together, in time, they will bloom beautifully!

Let's Grow & Bloom my friends - Love & Blessings, Tammy Jo

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Next Video Episode: BLOOM. And this one I'm looking forward to exploring with you and within myself. What does it mean to bloom, and how can I make something meaningful to represent it? 

WATCH the GROW episode over on YouTube and then come back — because bloom is coming, friend.