Another story about trees

A couple of years ago, I decided that we needed some trees in our yard, and being too cheap to go to a nursery and buy some, I went into the woods and dug up some tiny little oak trees about a foot tall and planted these in places in my yard. That same year, we had trouble with our lawnmower, and when we finally got it fixed, the grass was taller than my little trees. Husband just wanted to hurry and get the grass cut before the mower broke again, so he paid no attention to where my trees were planted and mowed them all down.

However, one tree came back, so whenever I got the chance to mow (I don’t mow much—he thinks I am too hard on his equipment), I would carefully go around the little tree, and it grew to about two feet tall. Then the mower broke again, and we had a neighbor come and cut the yard. Of course, he cut my tree down again. But a few weeks later, there it was, peeking out of the ground again, so I threatened Husband with bodily harm if he cut that tree down again, and we have left it alone, and it is now about two feet tall again.

This spring we decided to finally shell out some money and buy some decent sized trees, and we planted them in a straight row down both sides of the driveway. The problem is that while the little oak tree falls into the straight line, it sits about two feet from one of the newly planted dogwoods which are evenly spaced in a very uniform row (Husband is all about symmetry.). So it throws everything off. We decided that the little oak has to go in order to preserve the perfect lines, but neither of us has mowed it down. I told Husband a few days ago that maybe we should just leave it there; it won’t hurt anything, and trees grow close together in the woods and do fine. He just kind of grunted, but the last time he mowed, he didn’t cut it down.

That little oak tree must have a good root system developed in order to keep coming back the way it does. As I’ve said before, I think people are like trees. If we establish a good root system, we can be cut down, knocked around, and trampled on, but we’ll still bounce back. We might not be the prettiest, and we might not fall into that straight line where everyone wants us to be, but we will be strong and sturdy and will eventually provide lots more shade than the rest of the trees.

I love that persistent little oak tree more than the pretty dogwoods—which, by the way, are struggling to survive in this dry summer weather—and I’m going to protect it from being cut down again. I suspect that God feels the same way about his out-of-line, but persistent, children.