So many things about this grief journey don’t make sense in my mind. I consider myself a pretty logical person, and I don’t generally do well with things that I can’t make sense of.
One way I often try to make sense of things, especially emotional and spiritual things that I can’t really define, is by looking to nature for clarification and often simplification. I think I’ve mentioned that a few times before in this journey – I feel the Lord has given us so much to learn from nature and the world around us, and I’m grateful for a couple key ways I’ve felt and seen that this week as I’ve been processing some of my heartache at missing Benny.
The other day I was walking through our neighborhood and it was a beautiful spring day. As I looked around at the many, many trees that line our streets (which I love and feel so grateful for), I noticed something I hadn’t really noticed before. Trees defy gravity. Like, totally and completely defy it. I don’t know how they do, but they do. Branches grow up and leaves and blossoms grow out, in ways that seem contrary to the laws of physics.
I’m not a scientist and would never pretend to be. All the science courses in school were always my worst. I just don’t have that bone in me. (My nuclear physicist grandfather and distant cousin Henry Eyring would be so disappointed.) But I’m pretty sure I understand that gravity, nearly without exception, demands that objects pull toward the earth, so the fact that tree branches grow up and out and hang in the air just amazed me for some reason when I stopped and paid attention to them the other day!
And then it got me thinking – I just don’t understand it. And there’s a lot I don’t understand. But that doesn’t make it any less true or any less real. It’s clearly happening, and we’ve gotten so used to the fact that trees grow up and out that we don’t think twice when we see it. But it seems like a pretty crazy feat of nature how it all works. Doesn’t it? Maybe I’m the only one who’s never really thought about it and feel like I’ve made some important discovery nearly 40 years into my life. I hope not, because I’d feel kind of silly if so. But it really kind of blew my mind recently as I consciously started to think about it.
Like anyone with a question in 2021, I took to the internet to figure out exactly how and why trees defy gravity, and I learned that in order to grow against gravity, plants need two things. The first is a “skeletal” system, which is their rigid and strong trunk. The second is a “motor” or “muscle” system which controls and corrects the posture of the tree by applying forces that work against the gravitational forces. If not, gravity would prevent the tree from growing straight and vertical.
So, it’s not just that trees defy gravity – they work hard to do it. It doesn’t just happen that they grow upward. They have forces actively working within them to do so. Gravity wants to pull them down, but something stronger pulls them up. Trees were made to grow up and out – apparently they know it and even gravity won’t stop them from achieving their purpose.
Using this analogy, sometimes I think I’m the tree. Grief wants to pull me down, like gravity, but something stronger has been there to pull me up. The divine in me was made to progress and reach toward my heavenly home, even though this world is doing everything it can to keep that from happening. It’s not easy, and it takes a lot of conscious effort. But I’m glad that it’s happening. I don’t totally understand how, and like the last post, I’m pretty sure that six months ago I couldn’t have predicted that I’d be doing this well after losing Benny. But I am. And just like the tree growing against gravity, I’m grateful that I’ve been able to grow against grief.
Another “nature lesson” I was able to appreciate while driving through our neighborhood yesterday morning was that no matter how strong a foundation, or no matter how firm something may seem, it can always be broken. But thankfully, it can also be repaired.
The city has been doing road work on our main neighborhood street the last week or so. Goodness, it’s been crazy because they’ve totally torn up the road in two parts and left pretty significant dips between the streets. As I’ve watched them do this work (and experienced some frustration as a result), I realized that as firm as the road seemed, it must have needed some work. As solid as the road was, with the right tools the workers were able to totally break it down and tear it out.
Similar to the trees growing up and out, instead of hanging down as gravity would seem to require, the firmness of our road being so easily torn up and repaired seemed just as paradoxical in my mind. It’s crazy to think that the solid foundation upon which we walk can, with the right tools, be cut right through. Lately I’ve felt that grief can be that right tool. As strong as my foundation was, and honestly I feel like I was blessed with a pretty strong foundation, losing Benny just tore it right up. But just as they’ve now repaired the roads in our neighborhood to be even stronger than before, I’m glad to have seen the hand of the Lord repairing me in a way that I also hope is stronger than before. He’s so, so good that way. I’ve felt torn up like the road, but thankfully the Lord has helped me grow up like the tree.
Breaking and repairing.
Growing and defying.
I’m so grateful for how nature helps me understand my grief and be able to process it so I can continue journeying, in joy, toward my Benny.
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