Two Years After the Storm: God's Grace in the Uprooting (and a July Pause!)

3 things I'm still learning after a tree fell on our house + what's happening in July

It’s been 2 years since a tree fell on our house.

We celebrated our “tree-iversary” by sleeping rather poorly through another storm with our youngest daughter wedged between us. Fierce in the day, fearful in the night, the girl can sniff out an Oklahoma thunderstorm like a bloodhound. Its one of her superpowers.

In the morning, truly 2 years to the day, we discovered another massively uprooted tree laying across the street that divides our neighborhood and intersects with our cul-de-sac. Thankfully (and miraculously) this tree fell in such a way that the only victim was the stop sign most passers-through consider optional anyway. Barefooted with my coffee in hand, I pondered this strange coincidence while hollering at my kids not to climb underneath the splayed out tree trunk.

I suppose I’ll just never look at horizontal trees without a moment of silence for the time one laid across the back of my house—and the nine months afterward spent picking up all the metaphorical bark it left behind.

Photo by Dylan McLeod on Unsplash

Because I love a good occasion to remember—to re-tell in the hopes of forming a little neuropathy in my brain for this hard/good thing that happened in our lives—I thought I’d share 3 quick things I learned the year a tree fell on our house.

This may feel like tired content for those of you who were around when it was unfolding in real time, but I believe (and know to be true based on research I’m currently doing) that in order to remember lessons learned we have to pay attention to them, to give them their due reflection so that the memories will continue to produce fruit in our lives. More on this to come, but for now here are my 3 quick things…

#1 Physical spaces are worth grieving and celebrating.

I spent most of that summer unpacking my feelings around being away from our home. I even created an entire podcast series called The Spaces We Occupy¹ where I studied what the Bible said about physical places. My takeaway? They matter. We are embodied people living with senses to touch, see, hear, smell, and taste the goodness of a created world. This is where we commune with God, where we flourish and flounder in relationships, where we work and sleep and create. It’s natural that we would feel things about the spaces that allow these things to play out.

#2 A spirit of adventure is contagious. Let it catch you.

We moved 3 times over the course of 9 months. First into our parents’ home, then to a downtown apartment, then to a rental house in our neighborhood so we could ride our bikes to check on construction progress. Each move invited a new host of sweaty logistics, but our kids saw it as adventure.

Grandparents’ house? Hooray! We can stay up late, eat whatever snacks we want, and have grown-ups around to play all the time.

A downtown apartment? Yesssssss! Dad’s office right below is our new playground and he’s home from work so quickly. We can walk to the best coffee shops in our city. We get to stay up late watching fireworks from the nearby baseball stadium.

A smaller rental house? Bunk beds and a backyard again! It’s so easy to find things because we have less stuff around. We can walk to Walgreens to buy gum!²

Our kids taught us how to be adventurous. We could be curmudgeon—and heaven knows we were—or we could take cues from the 3 little experts in delight living right under our noses. I was always much happier when I did.

#3 Ignore the tendency to minimize hard things.

If we’re ever asked about it, we still acknowledge that it was a really hard year and this posture, at least for me, took some settling into. I have a tendency to perceive negative emotions (and their corresponding experiences) as unproductive and if they’re unproductive, it’s best to move past them quickly. But maturity by way of wiser people have taught me that blowing past these feelings only scoots them around. It doesn’t actually pick them up and put them in the trash where they belong.

Was it the worst thing that’s ever happened? Certainly not.

Was it a significant and challenging thing? Yes.

Did we grow more for naming it as such? I think so.

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We’re on the road right now to visit family—all tucked into the car like sardines with Midwestern heat pouring in through the windows and my laptop slowing burning an imprint on my legs. This is my office now and there’s no better time to say that I’ll be catching my breath for a few weeks. I’m learning in real time that creative work requires rest from creating. How divinely counterintuitive!

What you can expect from We Have This Hope throughout the month of July is a playlist of sorts that I’ll be sending you of some greatest hits. There are many new people to this little corner of the internet (almost 50 in the last month!) so I’d love to showcase the pieces that seem to have resonated the most with readers.

So I Won’t Forget will continue to be fresh content because that is part of my own personal rhythm of remembering. See you next week with that one.

I’ll be back in August with a new podcast season, a resource that I’m really excited to share, and some fun news about my future endeavors. Thank you so much for reading all the way to the end—for being the people I picture in my head as I write this and the ones I pray for when I press send. I love this work and I treasure your readership more than I can adequately express!

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• A playful retrospective from my husband and I on the Year of the Tree! We tell the full story from start to finish in this podcast episode.

• A devotional piece I wrote for (in)courage. You can still read it here.

  

1. This series is available for paid subscribers and I’d like to continue honoring that for those who’ve paid. If you’re curious about the series, consider doing a monthly subscription. And of course, if the paywall is a barrier for you, let’s chat. :)

2. A very real point of enthusiasm at the time.