Daring to Dream
When I began my job as Plant With Purpose’s Grant Writer, I was relatively new to the International Development scene—microcredit and sustainability aren’t exactly staples of the Creative Writing major’s vocabulary. But in my time at Plant With Purpose, I’ve found the key to successful development programs isn’t based on knowledge or jargon. Success in the development world comes from being human and viewing others as such.
I may not know a whole lot about development (although I’m learning), but I do know what it’s like to be human. I know what it’s like to feel hopeless and disempowered. I know what it’s like to not want to be overlooked or have my skills and talents disregarded. I don’t like to have things done for me, and the only way I actually change or grow or solve problems is when the problem solving approach is something completely unique to me.
The people who’ve been most influential in my life—my mom, my best friends, college mentors—have all been people who help me unlock my gifts and talents, helping me become more fully who I was meant to be.
That’s what Plant With Purpose does. Sure we work with communities to plant trees and apply sustainable agriculture techniques. We supply microloans and train church leaders to respond to the needs of their congregations and communities, but the most significant part of Plant with Purpose’s work is that the work or “development” being done isn’t Plant With Purpose’s work at all. It’s the communities’. Plant With Purpose takes a “community development approach.” In other words, we empower communities to start to take responsibility for the solutions to their own problems.
Plant With Purpose views the farmers we work with as partners, not fix-it-projects or mere passengers on this development journey. Lasting change cannot occur unless people want to change—and more importantly—believe that they can change. You can’t actually force anyone to grow—just ask any mother of a teenager. That’s why Plant With Purpose conducts a Participatory Rural Appraisal before starting work in any community. During these appraisals the community decides what their greatest needs are and what needs to be done to solve them. Only if Plant With Purpose’s expertise aligns with the community’s needs do we begin to work with them.
Plant With Purpose empowers hopeless communities to begin to dream again. The communities provide the vision and the dream; we provide the tools, training, and means to turn their dreams into reality.
About Plant With Purpose
Plant With Purpose reverses deforestation and poverty around the world by transforming the lives of the rural poor. Plant With Purpose has been breaking this vicious cycle since 1984 by changing it into a victorious cycle of environmental restoration, economic empowerment, and spiritual renewal in the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Tanzania, Burundi, Mexico, and Thailand.
Photo credit: Plant With Purpose
This post originally appeared on the Plant With Purpose blog and has been re-posted with permission.
Planting Beautiful Things
All this earth
Could all that is lost ever be found
Could a garden come up from this ground at all
With all this writing on weeding and planting good and bad days, I figured it was time to put the metaphor into action. Good Friday seemed as good a time as any to bury a tiny seed into the damp earth in hopes of new life.
Here are some images from my adventures in gardening while listening to Gungor's You Make Beautiful Things on repeat:
Life springs forth from one small seed, nourishing the body and sustaining the soul.
I cheated and bought some starter spinach and tomato plants so I can eat salad right out of my front yard.
As I transplanted the baby plants into their new home, I was struck by the empty tomb of their former containers--an emptiness that speaks the hope of growth and new life.
A garden will come up from this ground. Our faith does not end on Friday, in the crucifixion and the rejection. Yes, it begins in the pain, in the bare earth, in the darkness, but it doesn't end there. Today--Good Friday--I am humbled to serve an ever-creating God who makes beautiful things out of death sentences and empty tombs, out of dust and out of us.
Thank you, Love.
Just Dance
Sweat plastered my face and my cowboy hat threatened to slide down over my eyes. I punched out kick-ball-changes and pumped my arms to the hypnotic beat. The stage lights stared me down like an interrogation. My heart pounded in my temples, my fingers, my chest. I don’t remember breathing the entire three minutes that I was on stage. I confidently shook my hips and worked the crowd with twelve other girls dressed in the same plaid shirts and too-big, one-size-doesn’t-fit-all, white cowboy hats. I was fully alive and fully uncontainable. I licked my parched lips and tasted the salt of sweat. I heard the beat of the too familiar song, but I didn’t listen to it, I danced it. I was pleased to find that my body moved in perfect harmony with the music and the other dancers. We danced in perfect formation on the creaky, dark stage. I caught a glimpse of the spellbound audience, eyebrows raised, lips formed into a breathless “O,” but I didn’t really see them. The dance, the movement, consumed me and for three whole minutes I was totally free. My doubts, fears, and insecurities vanished. I danced who I was, but most importantly, I danced who I wanted to be.
God has a way of speaking to me through visions—not visions I see, but visions others see and boldly share with me.
The visions have ranged from strange to cheesy to downright disturbing. I’ve been lucky enough to be given the visions with a caveat: if it doesn’t resonate or sound like God, then don’t worry about it. And I haven’t.
Amidst the generic and the platitudnal (is that even word?), I’ve been told phrases that speak straight into my soul. Even writing about it sounds too lavish, too over the top, but sometimes God reveals a vision or a word or an encouragement to others just for me.
Like the one I received a few months ago. A woman from church had a vision of me dancing. She felt like God had a message just for me.
“Lead like you dance,” she said to me.
Say that to anyone else and it may sound cheesy, hokey, or downright terrifying. For a lot of people, dancing is a source of panic, anxiety, and fear of looking stupid (just ask my ex-boyfriends). But for me, dancing is one of the only times I don't feel stupid, when I don't care about whether or not I'm doing it right. Dancing for me is pure joy, pure freedom.
"Now I've never seen you dance, but I get the sense that you know that you're good," she ventured.
Bingo.
Through the tears that betrayed my heart, I smiled and nodded. It was true. It is true. When I dance, I know that I'm good. Not in a conceited way, like I think I'm the shizz, but in a joyful way. In a way that I am so free and filled with joy, that I know the act itself is good. God created me to dance, and it is good.
At the time she told me this, I was struggling with the idea of moving into leadership at church. I felt called to lead a book study on the topic of body image and eating disorders--me, a shy introvert who has never even had an eating disorder. What could God possibly want to do with me?
In the midst of my insecurities and second-guessing, God spoke to me through an image of a dancing girl.
God was calling me to step out in boldness and confidence and joy. And when I did, when I began to leave behind the reservations, I began to transform into the leader that I never thought I could be. The leader that God was calling me to be.
This week this vision has hit me particularly hard. I’ve been second-guessing everything—my job, my life, even this blog. I’m been frustrated, foolish, stuck. I am not dancing.
I picture the dancing girl; I remember the dancing moments like I described at the beginning of this post. And I ache for that kind of confidence. I want to know that what I am doing is good. This kind of confidence is God-given. It is not arrogance. It is not conceitedness. It is peace. It is contentment. It is resting in God's hands. It is obedience to the unusual things that God calls us to that the rest of the world, our friends, possibly our mothers, don’t understand.
Right now I’m waiting for this calling. For the next step in the dance. I’m praying for discernment. Praying for joy.
And while I wait for a macro-calling, I invest in the micro-joys. I choose to reclaim the areas of my life that I know I am called to. I choose to reclaim them with boldness and confidence and joy. I choose to follow the lead of my God with freedom and abandon.
I choose to dance.