Trees often catch my attention when I’m hiking, driving, and walking in my neighborhood. I love to cheer for young trees that have just been planted, and I greatly admire trees that are old and
established. Unfortunately, people don’t always plan tree placement well when it comes to future growth. They get too big and become a threat to structures or wires and have to be cut down, which always makes me sad. I shared the story a few weeks ago about how one of mine had to get “topped” as the next-best alternative to the electric company wanting to cut it down. If you missed it, you can read it here.
Last week, a very large stump of an old tree down the block from my home caught my eye. This beautiful tree was chopped down about a year ago, probably because it was too close to someone’s
front door. Did they not expect the tree to grow and mature when they planted it there in the first place? Or maybe it had disease? Either way, I hated to see it go. They didn’t grind the stump, so the reminder of its existence was always present.
When I passed the big stump last week, I thought I saw growth coming out of it, but figured I was mistaken. I
wondered if they planted some flowers or something right next to it. I walked over to take a closer look and I could see shoots coming out of the back side of the trunk—not from the ground beside it, but from the trunk itself. I didn’t know a tree could recover from being chopped down. Apparently it’s possible.
After writing this tree off as gone for
good, I can see now that she never gave up. All this time, she has been using her resources, and striving to reach for the sky once again. Though barren of branches and leaves, and without much remaining trunk (the visible accomplishments of her past), she knew she had more life left. Her future was not dependent on what she had already done, but what she had the will left to do.
This tree’s new growth had to come from within. Her community influencers may have been able to alter life as she had known it, and remove almost everything she had become externally, but they couldn’t get to her on the inside, her roots and her essence. They couldn’t chop down her will to persist, persevere, and transcend. They couldn’t destroy her inherent calling to grow and shine, to bloom and share gifts until every ounce of her life is expended. No. She decided to
survive what was meant to be a fatal blow.
How about you? Maybe life has dealt you what others would consider a fatal blow. Maybe a few of them? But that’s what life is: love and suffering, connection and loss, hopefully with come-back after come-back. Life is a big merry-go-round where we’re up and then we’re down. We’re going around in circles or waiting for
the ride to begin again.
No matter what happens on the outside, nobody can take what we have on the inside unless we give it away. Every day we have the choice to wake up and own our lives. Blaming others for our circumstances and hanging onto resentments get us nowhere. What happened yesterday is in the past and cannot be changed, but the present and the
future are all ours to do with what we will!
We have the option to thrive. We have the option to grow, to come back, and come back again. We have the option to choose life, and choose it again in all the variety of ways we can show back up. We can inspire others to choose victory instead of defeat. Making the choice to carry on is a victory in itself, the fruit
of which will surely follow.
Look around today and you will see evidence of life and growth, as well as death and demise. You will experience whichever one you choose for yourself. I choose life and hope, and getting up again and again and again. Are you with me? Just for fun and maybe inspiration too, watch this short clip of me choosing life this past weekend, despite a sudden rainstorm that that interrupted my plans.
