Life as a Peach Tree

We have a peach tree in our back yard. It was only a few months planted when we moved here, about 7 years ago. Our dog, recently transplanted himself as a stray, nearly killed it, along with a few other newly planted twigs. We decided it was anxiety on his part when we were away from the house, and so we fenced the peach tree and moved the others to better spots in the front yard. The peach tree eventually recovered from being mangled, but the main branch proceeding up from the trunk had been broken off. In the years since, the tree has grown a bit bent and twisted, but another branch sprouted from the trunk at an angle that balanced the tree, and has become one of the dominant branches. It has thickened to support the weight of other smaller branches that grew from it, and the tree is now solid, pretty, and fruitful. If disease or frost don't interfere, we usually get a good crop of delicious peaches.

The tree is a good lesson for life. Left undisturbed, the tree would have grown and become what it was intended to be - a pleasing, lovely, peach tree. But it was disturbed, attacked, torn, damaged, and nearly destroyed; but it lived. And as it recovered, it changed shape from what it would have become. It's now bent and a little lop-sided, but it lives and has adapted into the fruit-bearing tree that it became.

I know few people who've been left undistrubed to grow and develop into perfection with all the right conditions. Something usually happens - probably a series of things over a life - that interfere, harm, wound, and sometimes nearly destroy. It can be devastating, heart-breaking, for that person and those around him or her who care, love, and look on, often helpless to help. But allowed and encouraged to recover and heal, the person's life will grow in a way that balances what's left, strengthens the body and spirit that were damaged, and finds a way to new beauty and fruitfulness. In fact, some of the lop-sided characteristics that grow as a result are the most endearing and disarming to others.

Of course we each have a choice - and it truly is a choice - of whether we'll recover and adapt to life's wounding circumstances. We all know people whose lives are not just bent, but ugly, gnarled, and twised because of harm that they never learned from or lived beyond. Those people are usually not fruitful, and not a shady place of shelter for other growing things.

Of course, our tree has no choice as to its shaping, pruning and care. Each fall my husband and I look for disease, dead limbs and unsightly growths. We look up close and stand back for a perspective that only distance can provide. We prune for short term and for long. The tree has no choice and is unaware that it is our joint project. People, of course, have a choice to allow inspection, care and pruning - or not; to allow people in their lives who garden, or people who only harvest what's left. We can either allow and even invite God and people we trust to look close and from far to make pruning and care suggestions to grow balanced, attractive and fruitful. Or, we can choose to prohibit care and pruning, usually because it's often painful. But the result is growth that's unbalanced, diseased, laden with dead wood, dying.

We have adopted the tree, and we have adopted the dog, and we've each been shaped by the others. And the result has been, well, just peachy.