that tree
Down the stairs Riley comes, hair dangling in dark, wet, cheek-sticking ropes that send water wandering her neck in drops. Fresh from the shower and wearing her donut-printed pajamas, she keeps a quicker pace than usual, purpose the wind beneath her feet. She takes the stairs one foot at a time, instead of at a cautious hobble, traveling directly, instead of meandering first through her own comforting rituals. She stops abruptly beside where her dad sits on the couch, and, not wanting to interrupt, she waits, somewhat awkwardly, glancing back and forth, folding her hands in front of her, waits quietly but quite presently, for him to look up from his reading. Her attention can feel like a very sweet but very forceful, very persistent, tractor beam. Whatever this is about, she’s been thinking about it all through her shower. It has rested below her narration of routine, like a heartbeat.
Kevin glances toward her, pausing a beat to align his tone to his heart. “Yes?”
“Umm, Dad Jones. Umm, Dad Jones, do I have?” She keeps pausing, restarting to get it right. “Dad Jones, can I afford to buy Mom Jones a new tree?”
I look up from my own book, lock a blurry readers-filtered gaze with my husband.
This afternoon, while Riley was, by her own initiative, vacuuming the floors upstairs—she has, in various ways, been caring for me all day–the vacuum cleaner ate the power cord to one of the six-foot lit trees in my bedroom, and the tree went dark. Love in action, doing her best, and something broke, because things do here.
These trees, more to me than pretty décor, remind me of the trees of life, which I will resemble both in fruitfulness and healing power as I make my home in God, and from which I will take my nourishment for eternity. Ultimately then, they remind me of the ever-presence of God.
I fill my mortal life with tangible things that stir my recollection of unseen realities, reflections of the reminders God placed Himself in the created world, reflections of His analogies, because God has been clear that remembering must be an intentional practice.
These trees, with their illuminated blooms, lamps for our home remarkably to me like the always-burning lampstand in God’s ancient tabernacle, represent my living hope, the radiance of God’s glory. It makes sense to me, at some inarticulate depth, that each night I should lay down helplessly between them, entrusting myself to the shelter of God’s promises as I sleep.
But Riley only knows that I like my trees, that they bring me happiness. She can’t know, because really no one else does save God, what she will restore to me in replacing that broken tree, but so it goes, when God lives in and through a person. We don’t often know exactly how our small obedience to love contributes to God’s initiative for universal renewal, not where the Wind comes from or where it goes, but love me she does, and so, she stands inquiring of her father on my behalf, wanting to do something about that broken tree, shifting her weight back and forth from hip to hip.
Kevin breaks attention with me, that silent wondering if I am receiving this love, to tell her that she can, on her tiny supplemental income, afford to replace the tree, but that she doesn’t have to do so, because he has already done it.
I am stunned quiet, processing this, the love I never quite embrace could truly be given to me, the generous kindness and knowing, but Riley shifts her weight again and inhales, preparing to make her case.
“I mean the tree beside her bed,” she says, lifting her open palm, for she would give from her emptiness to re-place my hope. “I want to get her another one, because the vacuum cleaner sucked up the cord and broke it.” She wants him to understand, because it cannot be that from the moment she thought of this idea the Father had already intervened, had already supplied what’s needed. I grin wide, thinking immediately of countless stories of incredulous petitioners, flabbergasted when the answer is yes, when all they had to do was ask.
Gently, Kevin explains. “I know, and you are very kind to want to do this for your mom, but I have already ordered a new tree for her.”
Riley’s hands find their way to her waist as she listens to him, until finally she says, “When will it get here?”
I shut my welling eyes, because she has applied urgency to me, because I see she can’t quite rest until she knows the timeline for replacement, because she cares so much about something that could be trivialized, minimized, maybe even should be in my own mind.
A reminder, that in re-membering the truth in physical form re-minds and re-binds my fractured thinking, can be re-placed, but the hope it points to—the actual, real gift–never leaves, never spoils, never dies, never fades.
She doesn’t know, not really, how she’s caring for my memory, though, and so, here I am again receiving: she feels urgency only about loving me. Nothing else really matters to her, and this re-minds me of something else, that urgent love always has been the force, the surging, that drives restoration, God’s hesed--His steadfast, enduring love, the root of the healing Tree.
“Saturday,” Kevin says. “The tree arrives on Saturday.”
Saturday, eternally the in-between, the waiting day, our day for re-minding rest, for re-membering the truth.
“Oh yay,” Riley says, her face relaxing with relief.
I open my eyes, letting joy flood, and then, giving sound to the cry of my soul, repeating, if unconsciously, the eternal story, I say simply, “Thank you, for loving me.”
