The Low Branches
When I was young, I wanted to climb trees. Our family moved when I was six from our neighborhood where I had friends to a home that Daddy built on a sprawling, outlying lot filled with trees.
The lush leaves enveloped me, a bored and lonely girl, with companionship even as the branches scratched my elbows and knees as i pulled myself up. Navigating the variety of sturdy and fragile branches birthed problem-solving skills as I tested my footing and evaluated the path to the top. Amidst my leafy refuge, I felt safe, brave, at home.
But there was a problem: every time that I returned to a tree that I climbed the previous day, the lower limbs had been sawed off. Daddy went behind me and removed my access to the tree.
He had been away at work, and Mom rarely left the kitchen which faced the backyard. My climbing trees were in the front yard, so how did he know I climbed them? How disappointing to discover that I wasn’t as surreptitious as I thought! Maybe the trees betrayed me, and their sagging branches and scuffed trunks whispered to Daddy where I had been.
I did what most six year olds would do: I found another tree to climb. Next day, same thing - no lower limbs, no access. My parents and i never once talked about my determination to scale the trees and their deterrence to it.
This went on until I gave up and turned my attention to the ground. I started collecting rocks. I washed them in soapy water with a toothbrush and imagined that I could be rich if I sold them like gemstones. Unearthing and cleaning rocks was all-together safe, and if my hands got dirty, the suds would wash the mud away before dinner.
As my daughter - my only child - grew up, there was only one tree in our yard whose limbs invited her to climb. She wobbled and bobbled up the branches but always made it down safely, giving me some smug satisfaction for permitting her adventure (as I stood watch).
My parental assurance wobbled in her teenage years. My daughter wasn’t inclined to test the limits of her emerging freedom, so I wasn’t really worried about her daily decisions. But as she grew into her own faith in Jesus, I became anxious about what He would invite her to. What would be her opportunities to climb? Life in Christ is an adventure of surrender and obedience, and trusting God’s calling for my daughter is another limb up entirely.
She is a grown woman now, living on a budget, paying her bills, maintaining her car, working a full time job, pretty much discovering all that independent adulting entails. While navigating our mother-adult daughter relationship, I find myself a bit past midlife with a renewed desire to climb trees.
I haven’t physically climbed a tree since I was a deterred little girl. But I know it’s time to explore new paths, test my footing, and evaluate which branches will support me in this season.
I value accessibility, and not just for myself - I want the people I deeply care about to live fully and freely into all God created them to be and to experience. If togetherness is a leafy, flourishing tree, I’m sizing up opportunities for us.
But now I’m the one cutting off the lower limbs, sabotaging the climb. My chainsaw is fear.
When i crank it up, it sounds like “What if what if what if what if what if what if ….”
I’m currently rereading Bob Goff’s Dream Big, and Bob would call this aggravating noise a limiting belief.
He writes, “We need to figure out what limiting beliefs we have developed that have us convinced that our ambitions are not available to us. These limiting beliefs come in all shapes and sizes for us. But they have one unifying characteristic - they hold us back.”
Other limiting beliefs look like being distracted, overly busy, or contenting ourselves with dirty rocks while faith invites us to experience our highest joy and purpose with Jesus. Rocks are boring.
Living a life of faith looks like dropping the chainsaw of limiting beliefs and leaving the outcome of our obedience to God. In other words, let’s find the branches He has for us and hoist ourselves up. We exchange our what-ifs for what is true about God. We give Him our desires for safety and control and He returns to us the assurance that He is steady, ever surrounding, ever present, ever wise. Nothing slips by His loving attentiveness.
We might scrape our knees or bobble a bit, but the climb simultaneously offers an adventure and a refuge which our Father longs for us to enjoy and bring others along
Sometimes I need a boost and perhaps you do too. Can we go together?
A few reflection questions:
What ambitions are available to you and what are you doing with them?
What’s the chainsaw you’re holding? What does it sound like? Where does that noise come from? Is it really true? What would God say?
What about others? Are there ways that you can improve someone’s access to their ambitions? Are there ways that you’ve made their ambitions inaccessible? What can you do to invite others to join you?
