A Time to Plant

 It's time to cut down a tree - or two - 

both literally and figuratively, it would seem. We finally escaped our too-spendy rental in the new state so far from the old stomping grounds. And after much dragging around of the realtor, found a spot to call our own and plant the brood and all our accoutrements. There is land here - enough for chickens and gardens and even for all the vehicles that accompany our menagerie - but it is virtually bare land. There are only half a dozen trees on the whole property. With the exception of one overshadowed apple tree, all the trees are a variety of willow, more leggy than sturdy. There is one just outside the bedroom window. I want it to be wide and spreading, solid and reliable. But it is not. It seems that it is dead. Yes, there are leaves and shrubbery, but the lady at the nursery down the lane - the Jolly Lane - informs that the leggy growths and barren trunks are indicative of trees that have ceased to be healthy - whose hearts are essentially - in reality, dead. And so the tree that blocks the view seems doomed to meet the chainsaw. And yet.... I keep hesitating.

There is another tree in my life that bears examining - the tree that is - that was - my life. Like the tree in my yard, it was beautiful once. It was everything a good life tree ought to be - productive, thriving, sturdy. Our marriage was worth emulating, our influence was measurable, our children were thriving and budding. We brought others under the shade of our branches to encourage and nurture them. Our life tree was good, and broad, and fruitful.

And then came the winter of my soul. The cold days that brought their bitter and ache and bite that froze the fruit and the leaves and the very sap in the veins. And our tree died. Our marriage lost its vibrancy. Our children struggled to find their own way, hindered by pain and worldly influences. Those who used to come for wisdom and refreshment passed by, turning their eyes and their lives away at what we had become.

The winter passed and spring came, and summer, and life seemed to come again, but it isn't the same. It is merely the leggy suckers, like those on the backyard willow. They are technically alive, but they will never amount to more than overgrown bushiness. The trunk is dead. It cannot nurture these branches into the thriving tree that was. The words of Jeremiah resonate:

Thus says the Lord:

“Cursed is the man who trusts in man

    and makes flesh his strength,

    whose heart turns away from the Lord.

6 

He is like a shrub in the desert,

    and shall not see any good come.

He shall dwell in the parched places of the wilderness,

    in an uninhabited salt land." (17:5-6)

Have we trusted in our own way? Have we turned from the Lord? I don't know, but if the shoe fits... The picture of an unfruitful shrub seems well placed over the image of our lives. But perhaps the problem is that I am clinging to the stump of the past. I am not dead, but our old life is, and yet I am trying to resurrect it. And all I get are leggy runners.

What if I accepted that God has cut off that life? That He felled the tree for His glory and my good? What if I worked with Him to remove the old and begin anew here? There is fear there. Like cutting down the foliage outside my window. The landscape becomes empty, and chokingly flat. As a girl who grew up in the mountains, I find the flat to be scary. I feel exposed - unprotected. 

But is He not here? To cover and protect? While I replant what is left in my hand, and let go of what was? As hard and scary as it is to start over, there is hope it in. Clinging to the dead past truly is hopeless - no wonder I have been discouraged and disgruntled. But to turn away from the old, and put my energy into something new, no matter how small, it gives a spark of hope for what could be.

“Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord,

    whose trust is the Lord.

8 

He is like a tree planted by water,

    that sends out its roots by the stream,

and does not fear when heat comes,

    for its leaves remain green,

and is not anxious in the year of drought,

    for it does not cease to bear fruit.” (17:7-8)

And so it is time to cut down the dead tree and it useless suckers and replant. The one-who-listens recommends a weeping birch. She says the leaves sound lovely in the wind. It sound poetically perfect to me - there will be tears in the process, but the outcome could prove to produce lovely music in my life.

---

And I read later in the new book of Pilgriming through this life. She talks of trees and about the rings that form - the years of health and plenty leave thick rings, easy to see. The years of drought and lack show up in thin rings, hard to distinguish from one another. In is an interesting dichotomy. I look back at the parched years of my life and they seem overwhelmingly large and significant, but in truth, they were years that lacked growth. They will only show up later in thin, drawn lines. But I have allowed my thoughts, and energy, and focus to camp in those spaces - I have treated them as though they were chapters instead of mere lines. Can I include them as memories, but not dwell in those places? Can I refocus my attention on the years of growth? Remembering the goodness of the Lord and the fruits of His labor? Letting him remake me and this life and the years ahead into the wide places of his grace and growth.

"But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus." (Philippians 3:13-14)

Jesus said to him, “No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.” (Luke 9:62)

“Remember not the former things,

nor consider the things of old.

Behold, I am doing a new thing;

now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?

I will make a way in the wilderness

and rivers in the desert.

for I give water in the wilderness,

rivers in the desert,

to give drink to my chosen people,

the people whom I formed for myself

that they might declare my praise." (Isaiah 43:18-21)

All photos were taken by me and my camera. 😊