Broken Toes and Living Trees

“I think you see yourself as reclaimed wood – like God found you on the side of the road, took you home, and refurbished you. And while that is a beautiful picture, it is not the truth of your situation. You are not reclaimed wood, you are alive. You are a strong and beautiful oak tree, deeply rooted and full of growth. You are living and thriving.”

 

 

For the last four years, God has used the same image to speak to me – the image of a large, deeply rooted oak tree. It started at training camp, when we walked through what it looked like to forgive my mom and face my issues of abandonment and self-worth. It continued throughout the World Race, as team mates would pray for me, always having different variations of the same image to speak into any situation I was facing. Countless times, the scriptures from Jeremiah 17 and Psalm 1 have been prayed over me.  I was even on a team called Deep Roots. The imagery did not end with the World Race, but followed me home in my own prayers and in the prayers that others pray over me.

 

A few weeks ago on a Wednesday night, I went to church. I didn’t want to. It had been an incredibly difficult day in my own life and in the community. It was the Wednesday sandwiched between Mother’s Day and Mama’s funeral. During the previous weekend, I had broken my toe.  My shoes were full of biting ants. I had no intention of staying, but as I pulled out the parking lot and was saying goodbye to a friend, he asked me if I was coming in.  I broke down in tears.

“My grief is too much. I have nothing to give.”

“Deb,” he said, “We aren’t asking you to give anything.”

As I stood beside the driveway and sobbed on his shoulder, I heard a car pull up behind me. Footsteps approached, a hand was laid on my head, and I heard one of the leaders of the group praying for me. After church he told me “God told me to pray for you right then, because you didn’t think you were coming inside.”

I wasn’t, but I decided to because he prayed for me. I hobbled inside, teary-eyed and barefoot.

During church we talked about new expectations – “I can definitely use some of those,” I thought, so I went to the middle of the room.  The group surrounded the few of us in the middle and began praying for those new expectations (side note- how cool is it that I get to be part of a church community where 3 members of our organization’s leadership team will pray for me?).  After that particular prayer was over, the leader who had prayed for me outside looked down at my bandaged foot. “What’s going on there?” he asked. I told him of my broken toes. Immediately, he got down on his hands and knees, placed his hands over my dirty feet, and began praying for healing.

 

Within minutes, the pain was gone. I could move and bend my toes again. We praised and rejoiced. But he kept praying.  “Lord, thank you for healing her toes! Now I pray for a recommissioning of her feet, as well.” He prayed that the gospel would literally carry me forward. He prayed that my feet would walk new and bold places beyond my dreams and expectations. He prayed that my feet would dance in joy again. He prayed that I would know that the things I had walked through in the last year did not count me out or injure me beyond repair, but that they made me stronger and prepared me for things to come. He spoke truth into the lies I was believing but hadn’t told anyone about.

As he finished praying, his wife came up behind me and started a prayer of her own. In that, she got a word from the Lord for me, the one you read at the beginning of this blog. The one in which God once again reminded me that I am that oak tree. That I am deeply rooted in Him. That I can weather the storm and drought and hard seasons, and thrive in the good ones.  That God still has big and beautiful promises for me.

 

So last Saturday, I did something I have wanted to do for four years.

 

 

I’ve gotten a lot of comments and questions on it –

“Why that?”

“Why there?”

“There’s no hiding that.”

Overall, the reaction has been overwhelmingly positive and supportive, but I didn’t do it for the response.

I did it because every single day I will have a visual and physical reminder of what God has done in my life for the last four years. 

It is my story.

It is the story of my mom.

It is a reminder of who He has made me to be and the journey He took me on to teach me who that is.

It is a reminder that forgiveness is a painful but beautiful process.

It is a reminder that He is not finished with me yet, and that there are promises in my future.

It is a reminder that the things of this life cannot knock me down or take me out, because I am deeply rooted in the One who is over it all.

It is a reminder that He is Good.

Someone once told me that they believed we all go through a point in our lives where we have to decide, for better or worse, whether or not God is good. That after that point, which probably involves crisis and pain and deep, dark valleys, we come out on the other side knowing no matter what we face, that God is good. Life will still not be easy, but we never have to doubt who God is again.

This year has been that for me. And despite every tear, every night on my knees in my bedroom floor, every emotion-filled journal page, I can walk joyfully into this next season knowing two things:

1. God is good and my circumstances will never change that; and
2. I am that tree planted along a riverbank, with roots that reach deep into the water.  Such trees are not bothered by the heat or worried by long months of drought. Their leaves stay green, and they never stop producing fruit.  And God certainly isn’t finished with me yet.