Ugly tree therapy plus one more
The image of a honey locust tree with thorns growing in spangles like cancer all over its stout trunk and spiny branches has been growing in my mind lately. Weird, huh?
But with three teenage sons now — two of them giving me heartburn
— I am struggling to understand why they do what they do.
Eventually, I’ll learn my new role in this challenging season of parenting. I’ll know better how to wake up every morning with faith that Love loves them more than I and understands everything about them — from the roots to the crown of their ugly trees: where the seed came from, who planted it, what nurtured it, and when its downfall will be.
Because those key “w” questions remain unanswered for now, I am looking elsewhere for meaning in these trying moments. And I am noticing the ugly tree growing in my life, not just in theirs.
My ugly tree symbolizes fear (think hyper concern) versus faith along with control (think ultra risk aversion) versus the freedom that young people need in phases to make mistakes, suffer natural consequences, and make better choices next time.
So, to grow faith and freedom, my ugly tree of fear and control needs to go.
These days, I picture that figurative ugly tree as the real one I found last spring while bushwacking on my parents’ farm in Illinois through a sliver of pasture our family calls “The Pizza Slice.”
This small acreage got its name because it narrows from a wide meadow into a gentle ravine with red cedars and briar thickets we later munched all the way to the pasture’s bottleneck with a gate.
Just up the hill from the bottleneck, a thorny honey locust tree — an invasive tree weed — stands. I’m not sure why we didn’t notice it in the bigger pasture beside a field alternately planted with alfalfa and corn.
Yet, there it stood — like an untouchable king of the hill.
My family and I will fell it this year. Until then, though, its image motivates me to fell my figurative ugly tree for something healthier to grow.
Both literally and figuratively, the felling process begins in the same way — by noticing the ugly tree instead of ignoring it; by walking up to it and around it; and then, planning where to put steady pressure on the trunk to cut clean angles before shouting, “Timber!”
I learned how to chainsaw with my niece in 2021 to help section downed trees for firewood, but also to target these thorny honey locusts. They present a hazard to livestock and people and drawdown water and space.
Of course, felling any tree comes with the risk of being crushed.
With the thorny honey locust trees, though, the risk justifies extra caution against getting scratched or punctured by the long, sharp thorns growing everywhere on them.
The felling goes fast. The clean up will go slow.
Ultimately, though, perhaps an apple tree with blossoms in the spring and fruit in the fall can grow there instead.
Until then, I am holding the ugly tree image as a push factor for change and another image as a pull factor.
I found this second image last Labor Day weekend. That’s when my family, my in-laws, and a good friend of ours finally visited Scout’s Rest Ranch — a point of interest in North Platte, Neb., that we pass driving back and forth from Colorado to visit family in the Midwest.
On a sticky 100-degree day there, we walked backward in time at the ranch William Frederick Cody (1846-1917) — aka Buffalo Bill — built in 1886 as a rest and relaxation layover for staff and animals between their “Wild West” show tours in the U.S. and Europe.
Inside the massive barn with dozens of stables, our youngest son, Ray, 14, stopped touring to hop on a barrel outfitted with a black plastic horned calf head.
The activity center gives visitors a chance to practice calf roping. But Ray wanted to ride, not rope.
He watched his first rodeo in July 2021. Ever since, he has dreamed of being a bull rider when he grows up — despite his low muscle tone and loose ligaments and tendons related to Down syndrome.
But something about Ray climbing aboard his barrel bull at Buffalo Bill’s ranch helps me understand how deeply risk taking goes in all three of my boys. It helps me appreciate that taking risks is not the problem during this season.
The problem is what kinds of risks they choose to take and how those risks shape their lives — negatively or positively — as they grow up.
That deeper appreciation brings a different energy to my tree-inspired imagery.
Besides focusing on what goes and what grows — ugly trees versus apple trees — I can get some grit from this anonymous quote: “When life puts you in a tough situation, don’t say, ‘Why me?’ Say, ‘Try me.’”