August 2004

Twisted Wonder

            Obviously a major trauma had occurred.  It was bent and twisted like no other I had seen.  I found it while canoeing several years ago.  Then last week I went back there to canoe my favorite lake — Leesville Lake in Carroll County.  It was a day mixed with wonderful warm breezes with puffy white clouds in the sky and very hard rains with rolling black clouds and thunder.  But the rain didn’t bother me this day.  I was just glad to be back and visiting my favorite places on this rather primitive lake.  There were just a few fishermen and I.  I had made my canoe as a winter project while living in the area.  I ordered the strips of Western Red Cedar and glued them together on the form I had built, and then put the fiberglass cloth and resin on to make it rigid and waterproof.  I made the gunnels out of Ash and bent them to fit the sloping sides of the canoe. 

            So here I was, back in familiar territory with so many memories just gliding along the lake in my canoe.  I stopped at a place where I had camped several times before and read for awhile in the pine woods there.  I went over to Camp Aldersgate where I had led the Senior High Camp for a few years when I was younger.  I stopped at an old spring that most people don’t even know exists.  The water was just as cold and delicious as I remember. 

            Then I paddled to the end of a long cove to see if by chance the old twisted spectacle was still there.  I was not disappointed.  I am still amazed every time I see it.  It started out as a young pine sapling, when a tree must have blown over in a storm and fell on it.  The little tree struggled to live — and did.  It continued to grow toward the sun as year after year passed until the tree that fell on it finally rotted away.  The tree that lived through this trauma now comes out of the ground, rolls over the ground in a circle and then climbs straight up to the sky about 45 feet in the air.  It was, of course, even taller than when I had last seen it, and just as healthy as ever — except for the twist in the lower trunk. 

            I thought of how many people I know who have had some trauma in their life, but who, like the tree, continue to pay more attention to the sun than the trauma.  Knowing the former trauma only fills you with wonder at how they could overcome something like they have, and yet their life is beautiful and inspiring.  That is what Jesus does for us.  We can have something traumatic happen, but he gives us the strength to keep growing as we look up and keep growing toward the Son.  These people know that it is not what happens to you that matters, but how you respond to what happens to you. 

Reaching for the sky,

Rod