TACO TREE

There is a tree outside the window of my husbands office. Its leaves look like tiny green (hard) taco shells sprouted off the spindly branches. Small light green ‘berries’, for lack of a better term, burst through the leaves in clusters. This tree would have fascinated me as a child; I would have plucked the berries and mashed them into ‘medicine’ or ‘poison’ while playing pretend with my friends. But as an adult this tree has seemed rather unremarkable…until today.

Today, as I sat sipping my afternoon coffee and journaling the sticky feelings lodged in my chest, I looked up at the tree and noticed something strange- It is dead and alive AT THE SAME TIME. Don’t get me wrong, I have several house plants that are currently existing in a partially dead, partially alive state, but this is different somehow. Seemingly heathy branches, full of taco shell leaves and alien grapes (that is how I view the berries), end in long, thin, brittle twigs. There is death, attached to life.

I immediately wanted to climb the tree with a pair of pruning sheers and give it a nice hair cut… but then I remembered that I haven’t climbed a tree in approximately a decade and I don’t own pruning sheers, which makes that task a bit problematic.

Then I began to think about how this tree is like me… sprouting new life everywhere (and obsessed with tacos)… but allowing old, dead things that no longer serve it to cling on, stealing much needed energy from the areas of growth.

Why do I still care how other people think of me?

Why do I allow others do define my worth?

Why is it that I can have grace and love for everyone else but not myself?

It is because, in those moments, I am allowing fear and darkness in… I’m not honoring the truth of my being. I am seeing only the dead branches and not the beauty of the life surrounding it.

The truth is- I am chosen, I am known, I am enough, I am loved. Cliche perhaps, but also remarkably important to realize… on a daily basis.

There is a verse in Colossians (didn’t expect that now did you… me either, its fine) that says- “He reconnected you back to himself. He released his supernatural peace to you…”

When I get in this space I am choosing to disconnect from my source, from my identity, from the essential truth of my being and it creates dissonance, anxiety, stress, and fear… When I choose to reconnect, to honor that I am a Divine creation, perfectly and beautifully created- just like the tree outside- I can flourish and rest in his ‘supernatural peace’.

There needs to be death so that new life can come into existence. There needs to be reconnection when we find ourselves disconnected.

What ‘death’ is hanging on in your life? I for one have a little pruning that needs to be done.

xx