Sometimes Our Roots Hold Up Our Arms
After living in Michigan for several years, a former family at our school recently moved back to Minnesota, the home state of both parents. I was reading the mother's comment in the post below. They miss our school, and even though they are back in their home state, she said it doesn't feel like home yet.
I could relate. Julie and I went through the same thing 12 years ago. It takes time transplant roots and that feeling of being "planted." I've written about roots before, but not until that conversation in the comment section did it hit me that my family has roots in Michigan, Iowa, and Kansas... and the image of a banyan tree came to mind. I have walked among banyan trees in Thailand and Hawaii and it quite unlike anything I'd ever seen.
The older I get, the more life feels like that, like a banyan tree... it gets harder to tell our roots from our branches. The more the family grows the more interwtined our lives become with others. And just when it seems like we don't know where things are going, we're just glad to be alive... to feel the touch of rain, the warmth of the sun... and to know that sometimes it's our roots that hold up our arms.
Exodus 17:11-12 11 Whenever Moses held up his hand, Israel prevailed, and whenever he lowered his hand, Amalek prevailed. 12 But Moses' hands grew weary, so they took a stone and put it under him, and he sat on it, while Aaron and Hur held up his hands, one on one side, and the other on the other side. So his hands were steady until the going down of the sun.
posted by .Tom Kapanka | 4:29 PM
3 Comments:
My husband and I have moved in 4 significant moves in our 46 years of marriage. We were married while he was still in college. I think back to the "roots" that were made but were shallow..and ALL the relationships we made along the way. Some "held" but most have not, though those folks to are intertwined with us and helped make us who we are today. I've seen the banyon trees and they're beautiful. I'm hoping that one day, when the full "tapestry" is unfolded we get to also see the beauty of how are lives contributed to it. All the knots that twist and aren't so lovely in the "here and now"!!
WSL
WSL,
A friend of our family was the funeral of one of their daughter's father-in-law. I was not present at the funeral, but the son of the deceased said gave his father's eulogy and opened by saying, "Ours is not a perfect story, but it is our story." He was referring to some of the pain his family had gone through in divorce, etc.
When you mention the intertwined roots. It made me think of the tangled mess most root systems are (as we see them after a tree comes crashing down in high winds). But the strength is in part because of the tangled tenticles and tiny fibers that hold the earth tight. The roots soak in the rain but also help the "family tree" survive the storm (almost always they survive the storm)... and I guess that's what matters. The Banyan tree is amazing because it seems to give each branch its own set of roots.
Maybe 25+ years ago, I read a book by Francis Schaefer's wife called "Tapestry" and I think in my 1st response I was alluding to that. All of our lives are made up of a tapestry here on Earth, intertwined in many ways. We don't see "the big picture" while we're here BUT God reveals it to us once we are with Him, in Heaven. The tapestry is all full of knots and threads and aren't very beautiful. Just kind of like you said re: your friend's comments at that funeral. BUT God takes the un-lovely and makes something beautiful out of it (them). The Banyon tree really is like you said....you wonder, how does it do that??!! WSL
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