I haven't been doing well with blogging. I'll fix that when I leave…I hope? In an attempt to learn to be vulnerable and present, here's a pinch of a current heart-struggle sprinkled with a dash of getting real:
When I was little, my dad and I planted all kinds of things together. My favorites were the pear tree and the willow tree. They’re important.
Last summer, I spent 10 wonderful weeks in the heart of the Smoky Mountains in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee doing this sweet discipleship program with 48 of my closest friends. We lived together, worked together, ate together, cried together, laughed together, danced together…mostly, though, we sought Jesus together. The program happens every summer…many of my sweet friends are heading back there today, and I’m not there. Yeah, I just cried about it. So sue me.
But really, I am looking at 3 more months in the US before the race. 3 months of living with my parents, working in my corporate jungle, wishing I were surrounded by sweet friends and smoky mountains again. Just kidding, that’d be a terrible attitude to have for 3 months. It’s for sure the attitude I have today, though.
Disclaimer: I’ve been pretty sick for going on 3 days now, my head hurts so bad I can’t hold it up, so maybe I’ll regret writing this later.
Anyway. Looking at 3 months without living in a 50-person, Jesus-seeking, community-building, disciple-making community, I’m sad. I miss my friends, the mountains, intentional 24-hour community…
Back to the pear tree and the willow tree.
I planted the pear tree in the 4th grade. I planted another one next to it about a year later. In order to get the pear trees to grow taller, my dad taught me how to prune it. I had to cut the lower branches off, even though they were perfectly good branches, to encourage it to grow higher branches, and after a few years, the trees were tall and strong and started bearing fruit…copious amounts of delicious pears! There were so many that it weighed the branches down so they touched the ground, but if I hadn’t cut off some of the good branches earlier, it wouldn’t have grown big enough to accommodate those pears.
The willow tree was my reading place. I would spend hours sitting under the willow tree, absorbing book after book. One winter, there was a hailstorm that split some of the major branches on my willow. The damage would have killed it if my dad hadn’t known how to fix it. He taught me to graft the branches back together, and carefully we pulled the tree together and bound it and waited for it to grow together again.
I am the pear tree. I started out so small, and I learned to bear new growth, and I grew…but the Lord had to prune some of that growth so that I’ll grow bigger and stronger and be able to bend without breaking.
I am the willow tree. When storms hit that threaten to tear me apart, the Lord takes the parts of me that are split, and he gently grafts them into Himself, and he waits for me to recognize where I end and where He begins in my broken branches.
I have been grafted into the tree of life, even my wounds are there to make me stronger.
I am being pruned in order to be prepared for the plans my Father has for me.
“I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful. You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. Remain in me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.
I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. If you do not remain in me, you are like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned. If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.
As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love.”
-John 15:1-9
I'm so sad not to be in Tennessee today, but I will remain in His love, and I will grow.
