Friday, November 15, 2013

Five Minute Friday: Tree

This blog has fallen on the wayside...far too long without a post.  I'll try and get a post up in the next few days and let you all (if anyone actually reads this) know what's been going on.  However, it is Friday, and I'm sitting at the computer, so I'm going to participate in Five-Minute Friday.  You can join the party here. This week's prompt is "Tree"

Start:
When I hear the word tree I think of two things - first I think of the plant that grows in abundance around our house... tall, straight, pointing to the sky, fallen down, dead, chopped for firewood, covered in leaves, bare, sticky with pine sap...  And then I think of the other kind of tree.  The family tree.  Family trees have always been important to my family, on both sides.  Family trees tell us where we came from, who we came from, what our history is, and how we are connected in this world.  But what they don't tell us is our future.  A family tree only looks back - it cannot look forward.
However a plant-tree can look both forward and backward.  If it were sentient, it could look back and remember what it was like to be a sapling, a slender shoot coming up from the ground.  And it could look forward to what it will be - big and strong, growing both in height and diameter and weather, space and time allow.  For a tree, there is only one path it can take, and that is the path of all trees.  It will continue to grow, grow, and grow some more.
Our family trees are different.  We can look back but not forward.  We have the whole world in front of us and can grow to be whatever it is that we want to be.  There is no set path for us.  We can be astronauts or doctors or mothers....

Stop.

4 comments:

Emily said...

I love this! I love the comparison of the two types of trees. I am so glad that we can change out family trees and grow into all God wants us to be. Thanks so much for sharing, glad to have stopped by!

Richelle Wright said...

neat comparison. i almost wrote about the family tree, too... so neat that you did.

Boni Lady said...

It's funny how many options of "tree" there are to write about! I didn't even THINK about the family tree! HA!

I did really enjoy your post - found you on Lisa Jo's FMF!!

Blessings to you!

Sarah Jo Burch said...

To look both backward and forward... what an interesting thought! and what a blessing that we're allowed, to some extent, to choose our own paths.