Sam and I went for a walk this afternoon, passing cluster after cluster of pine trees. They've always made me a little nervous, especially during a storm. Too tall, roots too shallow. They give me the impression that a heavy breeze could topple them in a flash. I don't like pine trees; I never have. They seem pointless--asking for trouble with little beauty and lots of needles. If I didn't know better, I would have thought they were a sturdier kind of tree. It's all a front. North Carolinians all know pines are the first to fall when a storm comes to town. Tall, proud, but weak in the knees.
We cut our walk short when the wind started to pick up and the sky went ominous, but decided to sit under shelter and watch the storm unfold. We sat across from another grouping of pines, watching them sway with the wind and enjoying the steady breeze on our faces, the occasional smatter of rain against a cheek.
We sat there watching those trees together when it hit me: I'm a pine tree. In the appearance of things, I've got it together. I'm grieving as well as could be expected when the weather's fair enough. Only I know just how much I'm dancing in the wind, how afraid I am of toppling, rigid, roots exposed for all their shallow. A whisper of things not going as I've been hoping and praying for is all it takes to knock me down.
A couple weeks ago I was aimlessly thumbing through a book of NC photography on my sister's kitchen counter, and stopped at a page with a fascinating tree. I read the side description out of curiosity. The tree had started as a courageous little sapling who imprudently sprouted on top of a felled Birch. As the sprout grew, its roots encompassed the stump and sank deep into the ground. Eventually, the stump underneath rotted away entirely, leaving the sapling "suspended" tall, sturdy, deep-rooted above the earth. What had once been rot and decay transformed into open air.
This image has been running through my mind for a couple weeks now. As it turns out, I'm not that Baby Birch. I want to be--want our baby boy to be, too. I want to root ourselves so deeply into the soil of God's steadfast love and firm foundation that we grow inch by inch, hour by hour over death and decay, and watch as it turns to dirt under our feet.
Our baby Sapling's Story is not an easy one. He's not growing like that shallow, quick, proud pine. Instead, our baby grows slow and steady, miraculously sinking his roots over death and into Life. Surely our Gardener knew His intentions when He sewed our boy. Though Alder grows with toil at this start, he will, one day, become that beautiful, blossoming tree with the open spaces left where the Son shines through.
“But blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord,
whose confidence is in him.
They will be like a tree planted by the water
that sends out its roots by the stream.
It does not fear when heat comes;
its leaves are always green.
It has no worries in a year of drought
and never fails to bear fruit.”