I grew up among the hills and trees of northeast Mississippi. Decades later and hundreds of miles away, I still love trees.

Snapshot from 2020

Four years ago, I named the three trees that stand in my tiny back yard. There’s RB, the river birch; May, the maple; and Lacey, the lacebark elm.

I’ve never named trees before, but I almost lost the elm to an ice storm that winter. My own life hung in the balance then too, and I desperately wanted both of us to make it. So I named Lacey and, as the days passed, I regularly talked to, and hugged, my elm.

Then, when the impossible happened, and Lacey survived, I named May and RB too – along with the sad-looking but oh-so-persevering river birch in my front yard, whom I lovingly dubbed R2B2.

For four years now, through life’s storms, I’ve cared for my trees. And they have blessed me.

Indeed, trees bless all of us. With oxygen. With beauty. And shade.

And now – when we especially need all of the above – I’ve rediscovered a column I wrote in another lifetime. Okay, it was actually the same lifetime. But so much has changed that – well, maybe you know.

Back then, I lived in another place entirely, and my yard had no trees.

Snapshot from the 1990s

It’s a little out of place. The white two-story farmhouse, with the ramshackle red barn behind it and the lofty trees around it, should overlook acres of fields. Until recently, it did overlook acres of fields where corn and soybeans grew.

Now, the farmhouse sits at the entrance to a neighborhood of brick-and-siding homes, still popping up and built as close together as lot lines will allow. Because of their former cornfield status, few of the lots have trees, except the just-planted kind that, as yet, offer little in the way of beauty or shade.

Our own yard bears only a lonely spruce, not yet as tall as me. We purchased it and used it as a Christmas tree our first December in Indiana. After the holidays, we planted it in a hole dug in the frozen ground. To my amazement, the spruce lived.

The pin oak we planted two summers later did not. Since we continue to find other needs more pressing than buying gawky trees with only the distant promise of stateliness, our flat rectangle of a yard remains nearly tree free.

When thunderstorms, tornado warnings and ice hit our area, I’m glad we don’t have tall trees creaking and cracking overhead. When leaf-raking season rolls around, I’m content with our treeless state.

Today, though, I miss my yard with trees.

Maybe it’s because I feel a little out of place and a lot out of sync with the world. Maybe it’s because too many disappointments have hit too close together.

Today, I need to stand in the shadow of something taller than me – something sturdy and living, deep-rooted and lasting, that whispers timeless secrets as the wind passes through.

Instead, I sit, gazing out my home-office window, past one small lot that hasn’t yet sold, toward the trees in the farmhouse yard. At the forefront of my view, a weeping willow spreads its branches beside the red barn. The willow stands near the border between yard and vacant lot, reigning over both like a monarch with royal robes flowing.

Season after season, I love watching that willow. Usually, it provides me all the “tree fix” I need. In fact, if it were possible, I’d buy the lot that keeps that tree in my view, just to prevent anyone from building on it.

But today, I realize that gazing at isn’t the same as sitting in the shade of. The willow stands on property belonging to the farmhouse owners. If I were to sit under it, I’d be trespassing.

Of course, I could go to a nearby park and enjoy the trees there. But a poet and a prophet offer me another solution.

In Psalm 121:5, the poet declares:

The Lord himself watches over you!
The Lord stands beside you as your protective shade. (NLT)

In Isaiah 25:4, the prophet says to God:

You have been a refuge for the poor,
a refuge for the needy in their distress,
a shelter from the storm
and a shade from the heat.

Seeking shade, it’s to this God I go – a bit reluctantly, a bit awkwardly. I’m no stranger to him, nor he to me. But I stomped away a day or two ago, angry he hasn’t done more to protect my family from hurts that keep getting worse instead of better.

Facing him again, I know it’s time to stand in the shade of someone bigger than me – Someone sturdy and living, deep-rooted and lasting, who whispers timeless secrets as his Spirit-breath sweeps through.

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The “Snapshot from the 1990s” section of this post was my original “Seeking Shade” column, published September 26, 1997; and republished as “Snapshot 58: Seeking Shade,” in Focused Living in a Frazzled World, © 2005.

Image by 1344283 from Pixabay