Growth

I'm not sure why God keeps giving me pictures (analogies) with nature but I'll take whatever He gives me. :) I wonder because I'm not the most nature oriented girl. There have been some rough patches over the past few years in my life. Sometimes I felt sort of like my life had been uprooted and when trees are uprooted often times they die. I don't think I was literally going to die but I did feel sometimes like emotionally and spiritually I was dying. It's not a fun place to be. I don't mean to sound cliche but I tried to stay strong and with a poker face for my kids. It was when I was alone that my poker face could come off and my "death" seemed to take over. So back to my picture....

When we bought our house in 2005, my husband planted a weeping willow in our back yard outside our bedroom window. They are my favorite tree so it was a very sweet gesture for him to plant one at our new house. After growing for about six years, Hurricane Irene came and showed her ugly face to our pretty tree. It was uprooted much like I had felt like my life had been. In one big, nasty sweep I thought the tree, as I had known it, as blossoming and beautiful was gone. A day or two after the storm we staked the tree, attempting to save it. About a month or so later I noticed that it had signs of new life on it. Little sprouts of green were all over it. I was so excited to know that our tree was not going to die and it made me think about my own "uprooted" life. What was God trying to tell me in this? Maybe I'm overanalyzing a willow tree but what I think is that just like my willow tree, my own brokeness is worth nurturing too. (yours is too)

Put on love, which is the perfect bond of unity. Colossians 3:14