Tree Hugging Tree Lisa

Written in the months following the loss of our daughter Claire. Our grandson took us on a healing walk where we found great wisdom in the woods and in one little boy.

The wisdom in the last lines of the Dr. Seuss book, O The Places You Will Go, struck me on our walk in the woods today… It’s opener there, in the wide open air….so much wide open space on the trails that we walk, with our little grandson leading the way. With bucket and shovel in hand, he buries his matchbox cars in little holes, only to find his treasures again and again. We walk on and little earthly things grow in importance. He makes us bless the leaves, the sticks and stones. We bless the holes that need filling as he bends and squats, busily shoveling and our own heart holes begin to fill. We catch our breath. He opens our eyes to it all.

We spy a twist of vines, and I think of the twists and turns our lives have taken. We started our love life as very young kids of 15 and 16, marrying at 21, so innocent of the life struggles ahead. A pure joy we wish to recapture now because it never went anywhere. Our little Mikey shows us this. This joy is still all around, like a buried treasure and we can find it again and again, no matter how many times it gets buried. And the vines, oh how they twist but they gather together. They are not alone. They seek out others to share the journey, supporting each other, ever closer to The Tree, longing for, clinging to Life, climbing upward toward the open well-lit sky and the wide-open air.

A sundrenched puddle warms a newly built teepee built of sticks and limbs, leaf and vine, just big enough for little people to crawl inside and play. So, I get very small and climb in, if just with my head, and enjoy a cup of tea with my boy. And I ponder how the twisted, turned tangles of life here , were used to create something special; a place to play, a tiny shelter from the storm, to give pause from it all and be little again.

O the places you’ll go on a walk in the woods! The tree hugging tree hugging tree hugging tree, back and forth the love flows as the small and the weak is enveloped, taken in by the big and the strong. O the things made of God in the woods, I have found with a sweet little man not quite 3 feet tall. The woods are calling…and the Tree of Life is there for us all. He is the Woods and The Trees. Thank you, God for gifting us with this great blessed world to help us with this earthly life. Thank you for the twists and tangles and turns for they have surely made me closer to You as I cling and climb and grow with You.

Thank you, Jesus for the holy pausing and playing with little children who invite you into teepees too small. They make me want to crouch down to lower altitudes where the air is clean and pure, rich and loamy, smelling of earth, sacred earth. I am giddy, present and playful and for a moment I can see it all.

Thank you, Holy Spirit for Your warm enveloping embrace, as You hug me and I hug you and You hug me back. You help me stand up straight and tall. Finding purpose, I see the growth of soft green moss on me and it is good.

Amen