I had doubts about becoming Catholic.

It was 1999. I was enrolled in RCIA (the Catholic membership program for adults). I felt that it was time to join my husband and children in their faith, and I saw that my instructors in RCIA were people of genuine faith who did an impressive amount of service to others.  Yet I was afraid.  I had heard such negative talk about Catholics. My personal relationship with my Higher Power was central to my life.  Would joining the Catholic church harm my relationship with my Higher Power? Was this change right for me?

One day during that time I sat in a lounge in church, under a picture of a beautiful garden, and shared my doubts with my Higher Power. Instantly I heard a still small voice saying, “Without transplanted plants, there would be no gardens.”

As a gardener who had just moved into a new home and started lots of new gardens, I understood perfectly.

No one likes to feel broken.  Yet without change there can be no new growth. Yes, there would be the pain of being transplanted.  But there would be new growth for me, new flowering.  God was putting me into a new garden, where I would bloom and bear good fruit.

I chose to complete my training with those wonderful Christians.   My family became charter members of a new Catholic church in our area, a vibrant church that blessed us all richly.

That same message came to me again five years later. It was a beautiful May morning in 2004. I had been looking at my teenage daughters with grief in my heart.  “They’ll be gone so soon, Lord. I will miss them so much.”

Lovingly, that same still voice spoke to me again. “Without transplanted plants, there would be no gardens.”  And I understood. If I did not set them free to leave home, they would not be free to build their own homes, their own lives, their own gardens.

I could let them go now, with joy and peace and happiness.

I knew that there were new gardens out ahead.