Planted

Jacelynn Varbel

Sometimes being planted feels a lot like being buried.

It’s suffocating, cold, and unbearably dark. The silence settles in like a weight on your chest, and loneliness becomes a steady companion. You start to wonder if you’ll ever breathe freely again.

In those moments, it feels as if life itself has stripped you bare.  Friendships fall away, homes are lost, loved ones fade, and your heart feels like it’s collapsing under the weight of grief. Each shovel of pain feels like dirt filling your lungs, pressing you deeper into the ground.

But what we often mistake as a grave is really a garden.

What feels like the end is actually the beginning.

One day, maybe quietly at first, we make a choice. A trembling, fragile choice to not stay buried. To reach for something more. And as we surrender, we begin to soak in Living Water. It seeps into the cracks of our soul, reviving what we thought was dead. Breath returns. Hope flickers. Strength, once foreign, begins to anchor us.

Our roots push deep, not into despair, but into the richness of His love.

And from that strength, we press upward. Through the soil. Through the darkness. Toward the light.

Then it happens: His light touches us. It doesn’t just illuminate us; it surrounds us, warms us, embraces us with a love that whispers, “You are mine.”

We begin to rise. Taller. Stronger. Bolder. Until one day, without even realizing it, we bloom. We bloom into the truest version of ourselves. Not in our strength, but in His. Our beauty becomes evidence of His glory, our scars become a testimony, and our lives become seeds.

Carried on the wind of His Spirit, our pollen, our story, our truth falls into the lives of others still buried in their own darkness. And through His power, they too will rise.

Because being planted was never about being buried.

It was about preparing us to grow.