We're taught when we're young that the rings in a tree's stump can be used to determine the age of the tree. Additionally, the size of the rings can tell us about the climate during that period of growth, such as wide bands indicating a warm, wet season of growth or a narrow band marking a drought. Further, the shade of the ring can tell us the period of the year the growth took place; for example, a lighter ring indicates the spring/early summer growth period and a darker ring, a late summer/fall growth period.
Those rings tell quite a story about what that tree has become, what it has been through, and what the conditions were during the tree's growth. Fascinatingly, there are even scars left behind if the tree survived a fire!
The funny thing is, though, that you can't really tell any of that about a tree until it's been cut.
(Okay, technically, you can use a special instrument called an "increment borer" to remove a segment of a live tree to count the rings and tell the tree's age without harming it. But it won't give you the rest of the information that way.)
What if people were like trees?
What if we could physically see our periods of growth?
What if we could identify the seasons of adversity simply by looking at the marks left behind in our physical selves?
While we cannot see anything quite so defining as that in our physical bodies, we know that adversity leaves a mark. We know that growth is not always comfortable or pleasant, and that periods of hardship leave scars.
Like a tree, some things we face leave physical scars. I have a doozie on my abdomen that I call a "Warrior Wound" because it stands for a rare condition that I faced, the complicated surgery that repaired it, and the life I have now despite it. I have stretch marks that came from each child I carried and brought into this world. I have a scar on my eyebrow from a run-in with a piece of furniture as a child.
But unlike a tree, we can't see some of our biggest developments. I believe that the greatest opportunities for growth occur because of difficulty rather than ease. It is when we are stretched the most that we learn what we are capable of and how to rise to the challenge before us. That is when we become stronger than we gave ourselves credit for.
So, in a way, we can look back on our lives and see periods of growth. There might not be physical evidence of it, but I believe that one day, when we stand before our Maker, we will see the "rings" of influence, the periods of stretching brought on by hardships, the scars where something meant to harm us became part of us in a different form... and He will wrap us in His arms and say, "well done."
The funny thing is, though, that you can't really tell any of that about a tree until it's been cut.
(Okay, technically, you can use a special instrument called an "increment borer" to remove a segment of a live tree to count the rings and tell the tree's age without harming it. But it won't give you the rest of the information that way.)
What if people were like trees?
What if we could physically see our periods of growth?
What if we could identify the seasons of adversity simply by looking at the marks left behind in our physical selves?
While we cannot see anything quite so defining as that in our physical bodies, we know that adversity leaves a mark. We know that growth is not always comfortable or pleasant, and that periods of hardship leave scars.
Like a tree, some things we face leave physical scars. I have a doozie on my abdomen that I call a "Warrior Wound" because it stands for a rare condition that I faced, the complicated surgery that repaired it, and the life I have now despite it. I have stretch marks that came from each child I carried and brought into this world. I have a scar on my eyebrow from a run-in with a piece of furniture as a child.
But unlike a tree, we can't see some of our biggest developments. I believe that the greatest opportunities for growth occur because of difficulty rather than ease. It is when we are stretched the most that we learn what we are capable of and how to rise to the challenge before us. That is when we become stronger than we gave ourselves credit for.
So, in a way, we can look back on our lives and see periods of growth. There might not be physical evidence of it, but I believe that one day, when we stand before our Maker, we will see the "rings" of influence, the periods of stretching brought on by hardships, the scars where something meant to harm us became part of us in a different form... and He will wrap us in His arms and say, "well done."
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