Thoughtful thoughts or something like that...

I left the following comment on From the Mountain Top to the Valley Floor earlier this week. Christy's premature son, Elias, has multiple physical issues related to his birth. Her writing is thought provoking and insightful - occasionally angry - but always beautifully written. This was my response to a post she wrote after receiving the news that a tree she had loved as a child had been cut down.

I got the call last week from my mother that they had a magnolia tree in their front yard cut down.

This tree has always been at the house according to my memory - my parents planted it early in their married life, 30+ years ago. It's not a tree I paid much attention to; except for a few early years when my father threatened to cut it down unless it bloomed. And bloom it did. In my memories, it frames the left side of the house. When it was planted, their landscaping was small and they needed another tree. Time passed and the tree grew and other plants grew, and the driveway was extended to make a loop in the yard not too far from the trunk, and now the tree is too big, too messy, and my mother can no longer reach the blooms which saved it so many years ago (because the lower limbs had to be cut off to allow room for the driveway). It was time for it to go.

My mother says taking the tree out has allowed a great deal of light back into their bedroom. Light that they gradually lost as the tree grew, gone so slowly they didn't even realize it was no longer there.

I am struck that the magnolia tree is like some of these thoughts, assumptions, ideas which make up our internal landscapes, and which we outgrow and need to discard to make for newer, younger, more appropriate thoughts, assumptions and ideas - things that living with Elias have made you question and that you have generously shared with those who read this blog.

Thank you - even those of us who are not personally sharing your experience can use the reminders to check our own internal landscapes for outgrown and outdated conceptions, things which have grown and are blocking our light without our even realizing it.

What is blocking your light? Do you need to "cut down" any overgrown or no longer useful dreams, assumptions, thoughts, ideas, etc. to make room for ones which are more currently appropriate?