Re-bloom Where You Are Planted

This is a story about flowers and friends.

Even though we don't own our house I've still wanted to make it nice during the time that we've lived here. Over the past two years I've been able to make some small changes to our yard.  Here's a picture of the front of our house when we moved in January of 2013.

And here what it looks like now.  I've trimmed the rose bush, added decorative brick to the side flower garden, planted a tree, and improved the flower bed in front of the house.  

One of the things I did to improve the front flowerbed was to spread out the irises.  When we moved in there was a clump of irises by the front patio. The clump was so overgrown that only one or two flowers were able to bloom that spring.  

That fall I divided up the irises.  Dividing them up involved breaking the rhizomes apart, trimming the leaves down, and replanting them.  It took an afternoon of hard work, but I knew it would be worth it.  

Last spring a few of the plants were able to have flowers, but mostly they just worked on growing.  This spring the plants are established again, and so most of them have flowers that are just about to bloom.  

Some already have bloomed. I'm glad I took the time to divide the overgrown irises.  I know that these flowers will continue to re-bloom and get bigger year after year.  The people who live in this house after me will be able to enjoy these flowers for many years.

* * *

My first year here at Fort Hood was a hard one.  I had some friends, but I often felt lonely.  I was depressed about being pregnant with Veronica.  Sometimes the depression got to me, and I felt like no one would want to be my friend.  

After Veronica was born I felt a lot better about myself.  Thanks to how she was born I knew that I had neighbors that I could count on.  I also knew I had good friends who wanted to be my friends. 

I vowed that I would never let anyone feel the way I did that first year.  I wanted people to know that they had friends.  I focused a lot of my efforts on the people in my LDS church ward. All last year I made sure to seek out the people who were new to the ward.  I wanted them to feel welcome.  With permission from the Relief Society President, I created a Facebook group for the ward so that members could interact and get to know each other online.  I hosted a Valentine's Day Party for the women whose husbands were away on Valentine's Day.  I revived the play-group that had died a little while after I first moved into the ward. 

A lot of these things were ways that I coped with Brandon's 8 1/2 months in Korea.  I love planning and being in charge of things so doing all these things kept me from going crazy.  

My efforts paid off very well. For one I stayed sane. Also, I knew I belonged in the ward, and I hoped that other people were feeling that same sense of belonging.  Probably one of the best things that came out of everything I did was my friendship with my deployment-buddy Ashley.  We are both naturally shy people, and so we probably never would have connected if our husbands were home.  We'd met at church, but the Valentine's Day party was the first thing Ashley came to at my house.  After that we started hanging out more and more.  There was a time when we saw each other almost every day of the week.  Now I consider her one of my absolute best friends.  We've helped each other out countless times.   

Even after Brandon came home from Korea I was still working to help people feel welcome.  Brandon likes to help people even more than I do, so he was happy to go along with all my plans.  The Christmas Eve Party that we hosted for all of our friends was probably the biggest thing we did together - but there were lots of smaller things that we did too.  

However, after the New Year I started feeling like I was done with this ward and this area.  Our move to Fort Rucker was coming up, and I didn't feel the need to invest time into making new friends, or doing much to maintain existing friendships.  My heart was in Alabama, and I was hoping to just coast through the last few months in Fort Hood.  

My Heavenly Father had other plans for me though. 

At the end of January we received news that I wouldn't be moving with Brandon as soon as I thought.  He would still go to Warrant Officer Candidate School (WOCS) in March, but the kids and I would stay behind for several weeks and maybe even months until he was ready to start actual flight school.  This news sent me into a minor panic.  I knew that I would NEED my support system of friends to get me though that time without Brandon.  Strengthening my support system became priority Number One.

I felt that I needed to get the play group going again.  It had kind of gone dormant in the fall and basically died over the holidays.  Ashley and I were the only ones coming regularly.  I wasn't sure if anyone even wanted to participate anymore.  But then in one week I had three different people ask me if the play group was going to happen. I put out a message on the ward Facebook group and several people said they were interested.  Lots of people offered to host the playgroup and so its back up and running for the time beings.  I love attending and seeing women connect with each other.  Those connections are so important - especially in a military community.  

I also felt like I needed to talk to our Military Relations Missionaries, Elder and Sister Crockett, about getting a Family Home Evening (FHE) activity set up for Military Families to attend.  This is something that the last missionary couple did once, and I really enjoyed it.  Brandon went to a weekly FHE activity while he was in Korea, and he'd loved it.  He'd talked to the Crocketts about starting something similar here in Fort Hood.  They liked the idea, but nothing had come of it yet.  I had an impression that I should work with the Crockett's to get the FHE activity to happen. 

The Sunday after I had that impression Sister Crockett came up to me, and asked me if I would be willing to help her plan the FHE activity.  I told her that I'd had the same impression.  That's when we KNEW that Heavenly Father wanted it to happen. 

We put our heads together and planned the activity.  We decided we would do it monthly.  We really wanted to give military families the chance to interact.  Again, connections and friendships are so important in a military community.  

We had the first FHE last night.  I dare say that it was a big success.  The Crockett's provided pizza and everyone else brought side dishes or desserts.  At first I was so worried because we had 6 pizzas and only 10 people (5 of whom were under the age of 5) in attendance.  I thought that the evening would be a bust.  But then my friend Debby came in with her family.  She walked in the door and said, "The party has arrived!"  She meant it as a joke, but it was so true.  I was like, "Yay! People came!"

My friend Arika arrived with her kids a few minutes after Debby.  And then a couple from the other ward came as well.  We ended up with 23 people.     

Brandon was in charge of the evening.  After everyone had a chance to eat he asked everyone to take a minute and introduce themselves.  Then he presented a spiritual thought about the scriptures.  After that we all just talked.  It was great seeing people talk to each other.  

Sometimes it can be so hard to connect with people at church.  There are kids to keep track of and callings to prepare for.  Not to mention we are usually supposed to be listening to the teachers instead of talking to each other.  An activity like this allows people to really get to know each other.

The activity was a great success.  I'm so glad that Sister Crockett and I had the same inspiration to get this going.

My kids had lots of fun too.  They loved being able to run around with other kids.

We have the FHE activity scheduled for the next several months.  I'm hoping that the attendance grows and more people come.  I hope that it can continue long after I leave this area.  I also hope that the friendships that are created at the activities can last even longer.

* * *

I can't help drawing parallels between the irises and my life here in Texas.

When I moved into my house I could have been content with how things were.  I could have left the irises in a clump.  I wouldn't have got in trouble if they only had a few blooms. No one would have knocked on my door and told me that I should divide them.  It would have been very easy to do nothing.

I also could have ignored all the people in the ward.  It wasn't my job to make people feel welcome.  No one told me I had to host a party or re-start the playgroup.  As with the flowers, it would have been easy to do nothing.

But I did do something - and a lot of good has come from it.