When my family moved into our current house about twenty years ago we planted several trees. All were small and struggled to survive the harsh, dry weather. After ten years, our two peach trees had died and the two evergreen trees had to be removed because the shallow roots were pushing up the brick walls and concrete sidewalk. After ten years, I had grown a few feet, but appeared as if the mountain laurel and the Jacaranda had not grown an inch.

My heart shattered after a bad monsoon storm snapped my frail little Jacaranda tree in half. Rather than uprooting it, my dad had the idea to tar the two sections of tree back together. I rolled my eyes; the tree looked so sad and pathetic and it still didn’t seem to grow. However, one day a few years ago I glanced outside and noticed that the tree was now taller than our six-foot brick wall. I was amazed!

Over the course of twenty years, the tree has grown from four feet to over thirty feet. Although it’s never been transformed into a fluffy purple cloud of blooms, anchored to the ground by its trunk, the tree is always full and green, resembling something from a humid rainforest.

Life seems so hard at times, yet is so easy when broken down into moments. Life feels as if it drags on forever, yet death is always imminent. Bad things happen which we feel we could never recover from, but we do recover, and are often grateful for the experience and the subsequent growth.

The odd thing about the often long and lonely path of life is that when you get to the end of it and look back, you’ll find that it was neither of these. You’ve always been growing – physically, mentally, spiritually, and socially – so take a step back and absorb the sense of awe now because unless you actually make the effort, you likely won’t even realize how much you have developed over the course of your life, how much you’ve contributed to the lives of others and the world.