Blooming in Bloomington

I moved to Bloomington just over three years ago to start a graduate program in Germanic Studies. I want to say I was excited and optimistic, but in reality, I was mostly terrified. Though I had a break for a church mission in Germany, I’d spent five truly wonderful years in Provo, Utah, going to school and then working. 

My time in Provo had not always been easy, but it was where I felt I became a real adult. It was the first place where I’d felt deep loneliness, where I sought God behind apartment complexes when I felt too socially awkward to make new friends. It was also the first place I’d learned what it felt like to be part of a community, to understand what it meant that we all belonged to the family of God. It was where my faith faltered and then grew and continued to change in unexpected ways. It was where I encountered people and ideas that challenged my previous perceptions of the world. Provo had become a social, emotional, and spiritual home for me. A place that made me feel safe and grounded. A place where I felt I could flourish.

So when I moved to Bloomington in 2017 without knowing anyone in the city, I felt that I’d made a bad trade. Was I exchanging a beautiful Provo milk cow for simple Bloomington beans? I arrived at the tiny townhouse I’d purchased remotely, not knowing that it would smell like cat pee and cigarette smoke. My parents stayed for a week to help me fix up my new place, making it livable. But when they left and I spent my first night on the ground all alone (my bed hadn’t come yet), I felt, no, I knew that I’d made a terrible mistake in coming here. I remember staring at the ceiling in the dark, trying not to breath too much, and questioning why God let me move here, away from the little garden I’d worked so hard to build in Utah. Why had I abandoned my happy valley and come to the land of corn and humidity?

On one of my first Sundays, my soon-to-be friend Elise gave a talk in our church with the theme of Blooming in Bloomington. I was unaware this was an annual tradition here, but even if i’d known, it would not have taken away the power Elise’s words had on me. I can’t remember what stories or insights she shared then, but I remember the feelings I had and I felt reassured that God supported me in my educational goals, that my Heavenly Parents cared much less about which state or country I was in than what I did with the soil in whatever space I had around me. As Paul said in 1 Corinthians, “I have planted...but God gave the increase.” (1 Corinthians 3:6). Every decision to plant is an opportunity to grow something new. That sacrament meeting gave me to the framework I needed for the rest of my time here: Bloom in Bloomington. 

Which also turned out to be a convenient hashtag for many of my social media posts about life in Indiana.

My first year in Bloomington turned out to not be nearly as lonely as I expected. I felt an extra outpouring of God’s love for me during this time. My Indiana grandma Jeri Woodward, who had recently passed away, felt closer than ever through the red cardinals I hadn’t seen in the West. I quickly felt at home in a new community, filled with people from church and the university. However I still struggled to decide whether I was really cut out for graduate school. I wondered how big I was allowed to be in a world that had so often encouraged me to be small, to borrow words from Glennon Doyle. I missed feeling God by being close to the mountains, but I began to see them in the trees. I was encouraged by the words of Lori Wadsworth in a BYU devotional in 2018, “Knowing of our divinity changes the way we view ourselves and influences our daily decision making.” This knowledge of divine parenthood has helped me believe that it is possible to bloom in the desert, mountains, and forest. 

Last fall, someone at church said that it may be dark where we are, but it’s only because we’ve just been planted. Darkness is a sign that we have the potential to grow. I love that we have so many parables of plants from Christ and other prophets in the scriptures--what better way to think about life than in terms of new blossoms? 

Bloomington has given me so much space to dream, think, and act big. So many of the seeds that others have planted in my garden--seeds of kindness, thoughtfulness, and authenticity--have bloomed large and bright around me. 

I believe that my Heavenly Parents want me to bloom wherever I am planted. Right now, that means they especially want me to bloom in Bloomington. When we try to bloom wherever we are planted rather than waiting for perfect conditions, it is much easier to feel joy and have confidence in God's plan for us. I’m thankful for the soil God gives me, knowing sometimes it will be easy to grow and sometimes it will be difficult, but it is always possible to bloom where we are planted.