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In Ecclesiastes 3:11, we read that God makes everything beautiful in its time. It is comforting to know that nothing is wasted in God's economy, but all of it will be used for our good and His glory. You're invited to join us for poignant conversations and compelling interviews centered on believing for His beauty in every season.
Shannon Scott (00:32)
Well, hey friends, welcome back to everything made beautiful and to the final episode in our dormancy is not death series. Now I have to tell you, I did not expect an afternoon looking at Spanish moss to turn into a podcast series that would go where it went. initially thought it was going to be like a little spiritual nature walk, you know, a couple of plant illustrations.
some good theology, some encouragement about hard seasons, and it has been all of those things, but it has also gone deeper than I anticipated. I mean, episode one was tender, yes. It was about Spanish moss and dormant seasons and the truth that dormancy is not death, that the life is still there even when everything looks gray and still and spent. I needed that one personally, and I heard from so many of you that you did too.
But then episode two was harder. It was about kudzu and about what we invite in because it looks like a solution and what it costs us when we let it grow unchecked. And so today I want to hold both plants in the same hand because in the South you can drive down the same road and see both of them. Sometimes on the same stretch of trees. They're both draped. They're both part of the landscape.
And from a distance, you might not even register how different they actually are. But up close, everything is different. And I think that's also true of us. So let me put them side by side one more time, because I want this contrast to land fully before we move into the heart of what I want to say today. So remember, Spanish moss takes nothing from the tree it rests on. It draws everything it needs from the air. So it has no root system in the ground.
It hangs downward, dependent and positioned toward the light by something outside itself. It looks gray and dead in dry seasons. But then it turns green when the rain comes. It carries hidden life and hidden compounds that nobody expects to find inside something so unremarkable. It's been here forever. It belongs to the landscape.
the way few things do. But then kudzu was brought in from somewhere else, remember? It was welcomed and celebrated and subsidized. It grows a foot a day in the summer. It covers everything it climbs so completely that you can no longer see the shape of what's underneath. Remember, it doesn't kill immediately.
It just covers and covers and covers until the weight becomes too much and everything collapses. It has roots that go seven feet deep and survive every surface level attempt to remove them. But it carries hidden compounds too, compounds that address compulsion and addiction, which is its own kind of theological irony. So it's the same Southern landscape.
both draped over trees and both so familiar by now that most people don't look twice. And between these two plants, I think you have the full range of what can happen to a soul. Because here's what I've been sitting with all week as I've been preparing for this episode. These aren't just two plants. They're two orientations of the interior life. One receives, one consumes.
One rests in what holds it and trusts the air around it to provide what it needs and one covers everything it touches until the original form is unrecognizable. One says, I will draw from what God brings to me from the atmosphere of scripture, prayer, community, stillness, and I will rest in the place I've been put and trust that what holds me is positioning me toward the light I need.
the other says without using words because these things never use words. I will cover, I will protect, I will layer my strategies and my coping and my performance and my striving over the original shape of who I am until I even I forget what was underneath. And the question this final episode is asking the one I've been sitting with personally and the one I want to leave you with is this. Which one am I tending
right now. Now before you answer that too quickly I think this part is really important. Most of us have some of both. So this is not a binary diagnosis. It's not you're a Spanish moss person and you're a kudzu person and one of those is good and one is bad and now you know which category you fall into. That would be way too clean and life is far more complexed
nuanced than neat categories are sufficient for in this case. Most of us have a place in our lives where we have genuinely learned to receive, where we rest, where we draw from the atmosphere of God's presence and it's real and it sustains us and we're not performing it. There is Spanish moss in most of our stories and most of us if we're honest
also have a place where something has been growing for a while that's starting to cover more than we intended. A pattern, a posture, a protection strategy that made total sense when we first picked it up and has since taken on a life of its own. There is kudzu in most of our stories too. So the question is not which one you are, the question is which one you're tending, which one you're feeding.
which one you're paying attention to and watering and giving more room to grow and maybe just as importantly which one you've been ignoring. So remember Spanish moss survives entirely on what the atmosphere provides moisture, nutrients, the air itself. It doesn't manufacture its own sustenance it receives it.
And if you're in a dry season, if the Spanish moss in you looks gray and spent and you're not sure anything is alive under there, it might not be that something is wrong with you. It might be that you've been in a dry season and the trichomes are closed and the green isn't visible right now. Remember, dormancy is not death. We established that in episode one, but it is worth asking
When did you last get some rain? And I want to be practical here for a minute because I think sometimes we make this more complicated than it needs to be. And sometimes we've been dry for so long that we've genuinely forgotten what rain feels like or where to go to find it. So rain for the Spanish moss isn't manufactured. It doesn't produce its own water. It just positions itself to receive what the atmosphere brings. And I think that's actually
the most honest picture of what this looks like for us practically and spiritually. Rain looks like scripture you actually sit in, not mine for content, not speed read to check a box, but actually sit in slowly with margin around it, letting it do what it does without rushing to the next thing.
Psalm chapter one says the person whose delight is in the law of the Lord, the scripture, is like a tree planted by streams of water. That's not accidental imagery there. Water and the word have always been connected in scripture. Rain also looks like prayer that maybe has more silence in it than speech. I know that's uncomfortable for a lot of us. Trust me, I'm a talker.
I understand, but one of the things I've learned in my own dry seasons is that I can fill so much space with words that I never actually stop to receive anything. Sometimes the most faithful thing you can do in a dry season is just go quiet and let God speak into the stillness. Rain looks like honest community, not
performance community, not the version of yourself you bring to the places where you have to look like you're doing fine. The real kind, the person or the two people in your life who you can call and say, I'm really dry right now without them trying to immediately fix it or being uncomfortable with it. John 7 37 and 38 says, let anyone who is thirsty, come to me and drink.
Jesus issued that invitation in the middle of a crowd, but you do have to actually go. That's the participation part. And sometimes, and this one's for the women who've been running hard for a long time, rain looks like rest. Actual, non-apologetic, Sabbath-shaped rest. Not productivity dressed up as rest, but the kind where you stop, where you let yourself be replenished.
where you trust that the God who made the Spanish moss to draw from the atmosphere rather than manufacture its own sustenance designed you the same way to receive from him rather than generate on your own indefinitely. You were not built to be your own water source. None of us were. So if you're dry, go find some rain. It's not complicated even when it's hard.
Scripture, prayer, honest community, rest. Position yourself in the atmosphere where God moves and then trust him to do what only he can do. The trichomes are still there. The green is underneath. You just need some rain. But then there's the kudzu and the kudzu grows when we stop paying attention to it. That's actually one of the most important biological facts about it.
Tudzu grows fastest in unmanaged spaces. So along roadsides, on abandoned properties, in the places that nobody is regularly tending. It does not do as well, however, when the land is actively managed and cultivated. Active management, active cultivation keeps it in check. Proverbs 4.23 says, guard your heart above all else for it is the source.
of life. Guard it. Present tense, active, ongoing. Not guarded it once at a conference or guarded it during that hard season a few years ago, but guard it now regularly and with intention. The kudzu in us grows in the unmanaged spaces of our interior life. The places we haven't looked at in a while.
The patterns we haven't examined because examining them is uncomfortable. The roots we haven't dealt with because dealing with roots takes longer and hurts more than just trimming vines. The agreements we made about ourselves years ago that we've just quietly lived inside of ever since we talked about this last time. So the question isn't whether there's kudzu.
The question is whether you're managing the landscape or leaving it unattended and hoping for the best. Manage it. Tend it. Kudzu does not thrive where there is intentional management and cultivation. And as if we haven't had enough foliage over the last several episodes, I want to bring one more image into this final episode and then we're going to land all this. So there's a tree in the south. Shocking.
that Spanish moss loves especially. It's the bald cypress. So a bald cypress grows in swampy environments, along the banks of rivers and bayous and still water. And Spanish moss drapes them beautifully. So here's what makes this tree remarkable. The bald cypress drops every single needle in the winter. Every one.
It looks completely entirely dead, not dormant dead and not maybe there's still something there. It just looks dead, stripped bare, nothing left like it's over. And the Spanish moss keeps hanging there through all of it, through the stripping, through the barren winter, through every season that looks like the end for this tree. And then spring comes and the bald cypress comes back.
every needle full and green and fully alive and the tree that looked like it was finished wasn't and the Spanish moss is still there.
So it's got me thinking, I don't know what your bald Cyprus is, okay? I don't know what in your story has been stripped completely bare. Maybe what relationship or what season or what version of yourself you thought was gone for good or what dream or what hope you had that has been hopelessly deferred.
I don't know what you have been standing in in the swamp and looking at and concluding that there's nothing left. But I want to say to you what the landscape has been saying to me for weeks now. What looks completely dead might just be in its winter season. Dormancy is not death. And
Whatever is holding you right now, whatever has been hanging there with you through every stripping, every bear season, every moment you thought it was over, don't let go of it. Maybe it will still be there when you come back. Don't let go of that dream in your heart. Don't let go of that hope that feels deferred. Don't let go of that because maybe it's just dormant.
and not dead. So I want to close this whole series with three questions and I've asked some of them in previous episodes and remember this is not homework or a performance review. This is just an honest invitation to look at your own interior landscape and tell yourself the truth about what you see. So first, what in your life is Spanish moss right now? What are you actually
receiving from, resting in, drawing sustenance from without demanding anything in return. Where are you genuinely being held and positioned toward the light? Name it. Be specific because if you can't name it, you might not be as connected to it as you think. And then secondly, what in your life is kudzu? What did you invite in even with good intentions?
because it looked like a solution. But what has been growing longer than you intended and covering more than you realized? What is obscuring the original shape of who you were made to be? You don't have to fix it in the next 10 minutes, but you do have to name it because you cannot deal honestly with what you refuse to look at. But then third, what is your bald Cyprus? What in your story looks stripped
bear right now, what looks like it's finished? Like there's nothing left? Like that particular version of something you loved is gone? Because I want you to hold that question alongside everything else we've talked about in this series. The moss keeps hanging. The tree comes back. God is not necessarily all done with the stripped bear places in your story. He's always making everything beautiful.
even the swamp, even the winter, even the landscape you've been looking at and calling finished. In fact, especially that.
Well, friends, that is a wrap on this series. Thank you for going on this journey with me. It started with me standing outside in Florida looking at some trees and I genuinely did not know it was going to become this. Me sitting on my porch three weeks in a row, listening to everything around me, watching the trees and just asking the Lord what he has for us to display about himself in what he's made.
But that's how the best things start, isn't it? In the ordinary, just in the observed, in the thing that we almost walk past. So if this series has meant something to you, would you share it? Tag me, send it to a friend, leave a review. All of those things genuinely help get this content into the hands of people who need it. And I'll see you next week. But until then, keep your eyes open. God is hiding treasure.
everywhere in his creation that points to observable aspects of his character. What a gift to us that he's always making everything beautiful in its time. Even you. And I'll see you next week.