Forty three years ago we moved into our home, not realizing it was not only our starter home but was to be our final destination. About ten years ago some neighbors and friends who live closeby decided to sell their home. They put it up for sale, it sold, and they went out house hunting. After a few days of that, they changed their minds and cancelled the sale of their home. They felt they were money ahead staying put and remodeling their current home insteading of starting over. But I digress, this is, after all, a post about our tree.
When we moved in, our tree was just a sapling, there was no lawn in the back yard, and no fence. The tree grew through the years. Our children loved that tree because they loved to climb it, or sit in it, and we loved the shade it provided.
But then it started dying. Several times during the last few years, we have had arborists come in and trim off the dead branches. We hoped it would help, but sadly it didn't. Every time the wind would blow, our yard would be littered with branches from the tree, large and small.
Now my dear husband is a practical man. He got a little weary, maybe even a lot weary of picking up those branches every time he had to mow the lawn, which is weekly in the summer. So he felt the time had come this year to take the tree out.
So I took pictures of the before, during and after. I didn't realize how sad I would feel to see this tree come down. Our tree was a landmark and I miss it.
I wish we had just had all the branches trimmed and just left it there. I took a picture of a home where they did that very thing, hanging interesting little bird houses from it. You know what they say about hindsight. It seems to be pretty perfect vision, after it is too late.
This is a sad sight to see
I wish I had thought of doing this before the tree came down
This is a great example to apply to our lives. It seems that many of us have this distorted idea of perfection. If something isn't perfect, then out it goes. Our negative opinions about ourselves keep us blind to the good in ourselves and in others around us. We look in the mirror and think (and yes even say) naughty things to ourselves. The more we do this to ourselves and even to those around us (especially the ones we love the most), the more unhappy we are.
We need to take the gifts the Lord has given us and make them shine, instead of hiding behind the lack of perfection we see around us. Folks, not one of us is perfect, so we need to get over it.
We must accept ourselves as we are and make the best of what we can be, instead of turning our backs and trying to forget about the whole process. For example, we can't remove extra pounds just by calling someone and having them lopped off, so we mentally "put ourselves down." Why can't we just accept ourselves, like the tree that was changed to hold the bird feeders. Yes, it takes time to make changes in ourselves, but we can make small changes. If we can't ever be a beautiful, thin model-type person, we can lose a few pounds and feel more comfortable.
The tree stump is my touch stone. When I see it, I'm going to work harder at accepting who I am and what I can accomplish while I am here in this life. That is what is the most important thing to remember.
Maybe I'm not making sense to you and maybe I'm not articulating it quite correctly, but that's my story and I'm sticking to it.
Gloria
