Faith

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When we bought our house 16 years ago, I liked the mature evergreen in the front yard. It provided privacy, held birds’ nests and blessed us by staying fully clothed in the fall.

With time, the tree grew ridiculously large. I wondered if neighbors disapproved.

Then bare areas began appearing, and limbs began drooping. The evergreen was only part green; a lot of it was ever-brown. And it looked ever-sad.

My husband asked if I wanted it cut down, but I said, “No, not yet. It’s really expensive to have trees removed stump and all. And it used to be so attractive and stately. Part of me hates to see it go.” He probably wondered if I was secretly one of those tree-hugging fanatics.

Every year the tree grew taller and yet less healthy. My fear that it would fall grew at the same rate as the tree. Soon it loomed over everything—the house, the porch and cars in the driveway. It blocked sunshine from our windows and limited landscaping. It cast a pall over my home.

From time to time my husband offered again to take care of it, but I held on.

A severe ice storm weakened it last year, but it stood like Rocky Balboa in his last rounds in the ring—pummeled and wobbly, but still standing. This year, a midnight spring storm blew noisy gusting winds that kept me awake. I paced from the family room in the back of the house to the front, looking out my sleeping child’s bedroom window at the beast threatening the roof over her head.

Over and over I watched the tree bend, then rebound straight and still, then suddenly lurch again at the house. I moved my child to another bed, but I maintained my watch out her window. My husband came into the dark room, took me by the hand and patiently asked, “Are you ready to get rid of that thing now?”

“Yes, I’m ready for it to come down. I don’t see it the same way anymore; it’s diseased, ugly and threatening us. Let’s get it cut down. Will you take care of this? It’s overwhelming to me.”

A couple of weeks later, I watched a crew shred the monster into minced meat. Thankfully, they didn’t leave any debris; they erased every last evidence of that tree: trunk, limbs and chips. I was not sorry to see it go.

I walked to the unfamiliar brown circle where the tree had been and realized that we would need to tend to that bare spot by planting grass, watering it, and maintaining it with extra care, but the peace of mind was worth it. Sunshine flooding into our home was worth it.

Today, as I looked at the circle sprouting tender new grass, I remembered a time when I felt an emotional burden analogous to that tree. Something once normal in me became monstrously warped. The issue burdened me so much that no matter where I was or what I was doing, the emotional “tree” lurked in my thoughts, casting a shadow on my life and changing who I was. I wasted a lot of emotional energy on that blight. No matter what I did, I couldn’t escape its pall; I had allowed its roots to go deep and spread, undermining every aspect of my life. Ironically, as menacing as the burden was, part of me was reluctant to see it go. How do you explain that?

I think Jesus spoke to my state of mind in John 5, when he asked a chronically ill man if he wanted to be well before he healed him. Curiously, the man didn’t say “yes” immediately; first he blamed others for preventing him from being healed. Maybe they did block him. Maybe he felt emotionally defined by his illness and was reluctant to see it go for fear of losing a familiar part of himself. Maybe he thought, “Getting in that salty water is going to make my wounds hurt even worse.” He had to decide.

Someone once said, “Until the chronic pain of staying the same outgrows the temporary pain of change, you will remain the same—in chronic pain.”

Sometimes there seems to be no way out. Hopelessness paralyzes, but if the sufferer will hold to one tiny bit of faith—so tiny that no one sees it but God—he can be healed.

The ill in the story waited daily for the waters to “stir,” which was their sign to dip into it. If you sense the waters stirring in your life, don’t make excuses. Let your healer take you by the hand to the water. No one can block him. The moment you say “yes” to him, healing begins because hope and faith are alive. A little faith is powerful; it can drive away fear and disease and move into where they reigned. And then healing will rise like tender new shoots of grass in a barren place.

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