photo courtesy of ©GraphicStock.com
I was out yesterday for a ride on my bike in this gorgeous fall weather we’re having, and I hit a new trail – well, new to me, anyway. There’s a section where the trail splits and a lovely and helpful wooden sign directs you to a mile-loop trail if you should so desire to take it, and I thought, why not? So I took it – twice actually, because I missed the turn-off to the main trail the first time I cycled around. (Chris, quit laughing.) The trees in this park are incredible, and there were a few on the loop trail that totally caught my attention, not just because they’d be great trees to climb up in with a good book, but because next to them were dozens of younger trees. The older trees have been there for 80-100 years or more, I’d guess, while some of the younger ones have been around maybe 10-40 years, and I was struck by just how slowly trees grow – and yet over time some of them become incredibly beautiful and majestic and bear a lot of fruit (either literally in the case of say, an apple tree, or figuratively, in the case of a few particular trees I saw yesterday with a veritable forest of baby trees growing around them).
I don’t always give myself enough time to grow. It struck me yesterday that God is probably far less in a hurry about my growth edges than I am, because He gets it that things take time. He created a world in which things evolve over time. There’s a situation in my life where I know what the emotional goal is, and I’m not there yet, and there are days when I am so frustrated with myself that I wish I could just pack up and walk away. I was out biking, stressing about it, and trying to let all the head chatter about it go away, and then I saw these trees, and the stress started to dissipate a bit. God knows my desire to have a right heart, and He will get me there – but over time, not instantaneously.
Madeline L’Engle wrote in A Wrinkle In Time about tessering – the ability to wrinkle time and space so you can instantly be somewhere else (is this what happened to Philip when he “appeared at Azotus”?) and I have always wanted to be able to tesser – at least once – but I’m realizing now that I tend to want that in my spiritual life as well, and am not content to just wait. Which is probably why waiting is one of the themes that defines my life. Longing for home, yes, but“be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord” is just as strong a theme, I think.
I have a tree in my apartment that I have attempted to get rid of several times. It was an accidental gift from my mother, part of a housewarming present – oh, my word, seven years ago?! – a floral bouquet that we went to pitch when the flowers all died, and discovered that the greenery was an actual plant. We planted it a bigger pot and it started to grow, and it turns out the plant is actually a tree that refuses, no matter how root-bound, un-watered, or sunlight-deprived it gets, to die. I finally gave up, transplanted it, watered it, and named it Stanley. He has a very nice pot, and I trip over it daily, as there really isn’t room for a tree in my small basement apartment. Stanley’s a little scraggly, and honestly, most days, he looks the way I feel. Just not as together as he could be. But there is hope for Stanley, now that he is being more properly cared for – and there is hope for me.
Someday I may actually resemble the trees I saw yesterday – I’d even settle for looking like one of the baby trees that at least grew up straight and tall bore a little fruit of their own – but in the meantime, God loves me anyway, even if I do look like Stanley some days.
