Five Minute Friday - Tree

On Fridays a bunch of brave writers gather here to all spend 5 collective minutes writing on a single prompt. It’s a great way to catch your breath at the end of a long week. This blessed, beautiful place where we open our hearts and let words and tears and the inner workings of our lives bleed and flow and dance across the virtual pages. Yes, this community opens wide and invites you in to share. Come and visit and read. You will be blessed.  

This Week: Tree

Go

I watch her growing. Every day it’s a little bit more. A little bit better. A little bit more than I’m ready for. There are dips and lapses – of course there are – what else would growing up be if not a challenge to rise and rise again.

Tonight, she slipped up and something not-so-little-girlish slipped out from between her lips. Her eyes met mine in the dark; in the rearview mirror; she saw my eyebrow go up – that Spock-esque look that took me years in front of a mirror in junior high to master. “But I caught it,” she cried, “I changed it.” I nod. “But I know what you were saying anyway, right?” She slumps. Tears fill those eyes that, even in this dim light, I know twinkle green. They threaten to spill over. I sigh.

“You are more your mother’s daughter sometimes than I wish you were.”

She rubs her head soft on my shoulder. I feel the whisper of still-baby fine hair tickle my neck. “What’s that mean, Mama?” her voice is still soft and careful. I explain that I know where that not-so-girlish word came from. She’s heard it from me – heard me toss that phrase out before, I’m sure more often than I’d like to count. I tell her that it’s a choice she has to make, but that it’s part of my fault too. Can’t ask her to not do something she’s seeing right in front of her.

“How does all this mean that I’m yours and you know it?”

I laugh – that’s almost too easy. I tell her I would know it because she’s sassy and spunky and can’t possibly belong to anyone else being like that. Suddenly, she’s all little girl again, dissolving into laughter in the back seat trying to decipher exactly what spunky means.

You hear the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.

No kidding. My little apple landed on my roots. My crumply, wrinkly, messed up, dirty roots. I wrestle daily with this dilemma – how to be the kind of tree that I want her to fall near and grow up under. How can I be a mother and still be such a mess? Right – still human. Still vulnerable. Still in need of a Savior.

I’m grateful every day that I have One who went to a tree and hung there, bound by nothing more than love surrendered so that in my crumply, wrinkly, dirty mess, I can turn to Him again, and again for mercy and grace. And the lessons I need to raise this apple up into her own little tree.

Stop

Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, whose trust is the Lord.
He is like a tree planted by water, that sends out its roots by the stream,
and does not fear when heat comes, for its leaves remain green,
and is not anxious in the year of drought, for it does not cease to bear fruit.

Jeremiah 17:7-8 ESV

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