Trees

I found Dad by the river, checking on his trees.

"Pai," I called. 

"Hey sweetheart." 

"What are you doing?" 

He held out a pair of scissors. "The trees need to be trimmed." 

They stood in a line parallel to the river, baby versions of a tree that had grown up completely by accident farther down the bank. Most of them came up to my shoulder now, their thin arms eagerly reaching for sunlight. Dad hoped they would prevent the soft bank from more erosion during rainy season. 

He passed me the scissors, and we moved down the row, snipping off a foot or more of their height. "They grow so fast, they can't support the weight," Dad explained. Clipping their tips kept them from growing incorrectly. If we didn't clip them, they would break from the strain, or sag towards the ground rather than reaching towards the sun. 

I thought about this the other day as I watched the hairdresser take off the last remnants of my blonde hair. Something about the snip of her shears brought back the image of my father and I caring for his trees. Honestly, I have thought about that moment a lot in the past eight months. So often in life, I have made a habit of reaching and stretching in as many directions as possible even while the weight of the responsibility pulled me down rather than up. I can't do that anymore. Focusing on being well and eradicating Lyme disease is my goal now.

It's been a year since my diagnosis, since Dr. Smith first told me all the things that were wrong with my body. It's been a year since I left for Korea, since I posted that one "deep, inspirational quote" about life being an adventure or nothing at all. God has brought me to a very different place than I expected to be. I think about those trees again. I see the way they snapped back upright after being released of their excess weight. I see them growing and being clipped, growing and being clipped, month after month, always reaching and stretching for the rain and the sunlight in equal measure. Their leaves grew back in and they sprouted more branches. None of it would have happened without the scissors.

As hard as this year has been and continues to be, I am learning to accept that pain is a way for God to help me grow. Stepping out of the chair at the salon, I saw all my hair scattered in a neat pile around me and remembered pain, panic attacks, light headedness, brain fog, and nausea. I remembered Lyme, that thing that I still have in my body, that thing that I hate. But I also found myself fingering the short bits of hair at the back of my neck. I can still grow, I can still choose to love, and I can still find hope in God's plan.