Make Me a Tree

The tulip trees in my backyard need to be trimmed. There’s a branch growing against our detached carport, and it’s pushing the shingles off the roof.

I have measured my life in the blooms on those trees—nineteen years in this house and nineteen turns of the calendar. Nineteen springs, summers, falls, and winters charting the changes in my life by the dressing and undressing of the two trees towering over my backdoor. I used to sit on the couch in my living room with my Bible in my lap, wishing my life was different. Just outside the windows, the tulip trees bore witness to the passage of time, and with it, I ticked off the years of my life in two-week increments. I was ever and only in one of two frames of mind: trying to get pregnant or mourning that I wasn’t.

Another spring, another summer, another fall, another winter. Never pregnant. Always barren.

I wrote about the tulip trees in one of my books, measuring my infertility by the season on the trees. Not long after the book was published, my husband came home from the grocery store with a strange story. A woman he didn’t know had stopped him in the store—”Are you William? Your wife’s a writer, right?” Ever the extrovert, my husband introduced himself and shook her hand. She smiled with tears in her eyes. “I used to live in your house.”

She was one or two owners removed from the ones we’d bought the house from. The house is nearly a hundred years old; it’s contained a lot of living. We’d never met this particular previous owner, but she’d read my book, and I think if I knew that the person who lived in my house twenty years after I did had written something, I’d read it, too. The curiosity would get to me. She knew all about the tulip trees—maybe she’d even planted them? I can’t remember. But she’d walked the road of childlessness for many years, and she wanted William to tell me, “I understand about the trees.”

They didn’t talk long in the grocery store; they were both there with a shopping list. I can’t even remember her name, but I think of her from time to time. All her years watching the tulip trees and wishing life was different. All my years doing the same.  

And now, I’m firmly planted in middle life and contented in the way God meant for me to be, not in the way I imagined I’d be. The trees over my back patio continue to grow, bud, blossom, leaf, and drop their year’s work to the ground. They’ve weathered long droughts and suffocating Missouri humidity, fierce summer storms and historically icy winters. One year, we got a record breaking three inches of freezing rain, and every branch was thickly encased with ice. The trees bowed low to the ground, frozen in a bent position. When the ice melted, they recovered and grew upward again with only a few broken branches to mark the storm. Years later, you can’t tell that anything ever happened.

 

In Psalm 1, the author compares the righteous man to a tree firmly planted by a stream of water. Getting its nutrients from the riverbed, the tree was always fruitful, flourishing in every season. The righteous man achieved a similar fruitfulness by embedding himself in God’s Word morning and night. Scripture had an anchoring effect on his soul, pinning him to his God in every season. I have long wanted to fashion my life after this man. “Make me a tree, Lord!” I’ve prayed. I’ve learned in my years of walking with Jesus that if I want to live far from sin, I have to live closely to His Word. If I want to be a tree by the river, His Word has to live in me.

A few days ago, I flipped through the psalms at random. My brain was fuzzy in the early morning hour, and I couldn’t seem to focus on prayer. When I can’t think, I pray the psalms. Not only does praying Scripture focus my mind, it also leads my thoughts in the direction they need to go. I think less about my randomly pinging thoughts and more about the characteristics of the Almighty. The psalms are good for that.

Landing on Psalm 92, I began reading slowly and praying through each verse. I paused and grabbed a pen when I got to verse 12. “The righteous flourish like the palm tree and grow like a cedar in Lebanon. They are planted in the house of the Lord; they flourish in the courts of our God. They still bear fruit in old age; they are ever full of sap and green, to declare that the Lord is upright; he is my rock, and there is no unrighteousness in him” (Ps. 92:12-15). Here was another picture of the righteous man, once again a firmly planted tree that wouldn’t grow fallow. It flourished because it was planted in the presence of God. And though it is old, it still bears fruit, full of sap and life. The purpose of the long-standing tree? To declare the goodness of the Lord.

My prayer from Psalm 1 bubbled to the surface again. “Lord, make me a tree!” I want to be the tree by the river nourished by God’s Word in every season of life. But I also want to be the tree that still blooms when I’m old, full of faith in God’s goodness and anchored in His presence. I want to stand firm through every drought and storm, surviving every trial and tribulation, thriving in the aftermath of suffering. Somehow. If possible. But would Psalm 1 and 92 exist if it weren’t possible?

I used to look at the tulip trees over my back door and mourn what was becoming of my life. But now, I watch them and think, I’m still here. Seasons come and go, but God is the rock that keeps me faithful. He has never done anything wrong in ordering my days. I have grown in the droughts and the storms, my branches pushing out despite the wind, the ice, the heat. I’ve learned in twenty years of infertility that seasons are merely that—seasons—and they come to an eventual end. Life might seem to pass you by as you pray decades-old prayers with deferred hope, but I’ve learned that trees still grow in winter, and faith still grows in lack.

Lord, make me a tree, I pray in the mornings when the weak December sun rises over the tulip trees. Keep me close to You, keep my face in the pages of my Bible, my heart turned to Your purposes. Make me a tree that doesn’t bend with temptation or fear or doubt. Twist my roots down deep in the soil of Scripture so that when I am old, I am still green and full of faith, my branches singing the praises of a God who does all things well.

 

Life might seem to pass you by as you pray decades-old prayers with deferred hope, but I’ve learned that trees still grow in winter, and faith still grows in lack. Share on X

Author’s note: All photos are mine. The trees are actually tulip magnolias, but we call them “tulip trees” around here—not to be confused with tulip poplars.