I wasn’t planning to grow beans this summer, but a few months ago, I went to a Tractor Supply Store for the first time in my life in search of advice on raising backyard chickens (a subject for a future blog post). The staff were super helpful and generously shared their professional and personal knowledge about raising chickens. But I wasn’t ready to buy anything yet, because we are planning to come back later to purchase baby chicks with our four grandchildren. So, to assuage my guilt for having received something (advice) for nothing, I bought two jumbo packets of bean and cucumber seeds I didn’t need on my way out of the store.

The unopened packets sat on my kitchen counter for several weeks until I finally decided to give the beans a try. I spread the entire jumbo packet of bean seeds in one of my raised beds and waited to see what would happen.

Within days, I was shocked to see tiny leaves start to pop up until the entire bed was an overcrowded tangle of stems and leaves (I probably should not have ignored the spacing instructions on the back of the packet).

The lifecycle of my bean plants has been really fun to watch. After the plants reached a certain height, they started sprouting delicate little white and pinkish blossoms. I loved seeing those tiny flashes of color pop up overnight and hoped they would last longer. They were such a bright and tender contrast to the sea of green leaves. Maybe the blossoms seemed more precious because I knew they wouldn’t last. Like eye-catching hints of something else to come – they were just one of many steps in the process of becoming a bean.

I sometimes wish the trajectory of my own life was as linear as that of a bean plant. When I was a little kid, I never knew what to say when people asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. Thinking back over my life and my professional career, I still don’t have a good answer to that question. I guess I am still working on it, but the journey so far has exceeded my expectations.

I always envied people who had a clear sense of what they wanted to do with their lives – who they wanted to become. They seemed to follow a definable growth cycle and many of them went on to become something nameable: a doctor, a nurse, a teacher, engineer, attorney, architect, etc. But even those people who seemed to take the express lane to the achievement of their career goals invariably had to take many sideroads of growth along the way in response to the inevitable opportunities and curveballs that fall across everyone’s path. And at some point – unless you plan to “die at your desks” – we will all have to cultivate a whole new growth cycle in retirement.

Some growth cycles are welcome and deliberate. Getting married, having children, adopting a pet, training for a marathon, learning a new skill. Other growth cycles are unwelcome and dreaded, foisted upon us by life circumstances we can’t control, like the loss of a loved one, a life-altering diagnosis, the loss of a job, or a debilitating injury or acquired disability.

Last night we picked up our four grandchildren (ages 8, 9, 10 and 11) for the annual week-long camp we host for them each summer. This is the sixth year of Camp JoBaMa (JO-hnson, BA-kofsky, MA-thias) and every year has been a priceless opportunity to experience the world through their eyes, to grow and laugh with them, and for five too-short days, to have a front row seat into their blossom cycle and wonder what they will turn into when they grow up.

From the time my bean seeds were placed in the dirt, they knew exactly what they were supposed to become.  They did what was required to become what they were meant to be.

I don’t know what our grandchildren will become when they grow up. But I hope their journey includes many growth paths. And even after they have become something definable and nameable, I hope they never stop becoming and blossoming and bearing new fruit. And I hope they will always have people in their lives to help water, fertilize and prune their healthy growth.

In fact, for all of us – regardless of where we are in our lives – I hope we are always open to new growth cycles, to tackling difficult challenges and facing down our fears with resilience instead of retraction.

“For the spirit God gave us does not make us timid, but gives us power, love and self-discipline.”

(2 Timothy 1:7)