Jesus is the Giving Tree

I was emptying the dishwasher.

The faucet steadily filled the sink with hot water. Dirty dishes covered the counter. My belly sagged and bulged as I moved – I had only recently given birth. My midsection would seemingly never recover. How could it after two c-sections?

My body felt alien to me. This was not the body I had always known, always counted on, like a physical security blanket. But that detachment paled in comparison to how emotionally removed from everything I was.

There I was, now a mother of two. New to staying home full-time, discovering the chaos each day brought. I believed being a stay at home mother would eliminate the daily tensions of a once 9-5 defined life. I thought I would be able to enjoy my children without feeling constantly spun out. We would just be and life could calm down and simplify.

I believed in a romanticized version of what mothering full-time really was. I was learning how being a full-time parent had little to do with structure and peace, and everything to do with sticky floors and questionable substances in your hair. It had a lot to do with emptying myself more on a daily basis than any role I had ever had before.

There I stood, barefoot in the kitchen, dough-bellied, stringy hair pulled back out of my face. Sleep circles engulfing my now dull eyes. Occupying a body I didn’t feel comfortable with, living in a role I was constantly discovering new reasons to be terrified of.

It was all too much.

I remember the tightness of my throat in that moment. The pace of my mind running rapid, how scared I was, how tired I was, how uncertain I was. All of those thoughts were clanging about as suds bubbled in the drain and hot water slid down the sides of the sink.

My breathing quickened, and I felt it. A budding panic attack unfurling itself in my chest. I struggled to release the pressure I could feel was building. I inhaled and exhaled in rhythmic fashion, as familiar as labor breathing.

Back and forth, like a steady rocking chair.

Thankfully, the release came quicker than I expected.

What had built up for hours felt like it subsided in an instant.

But there was no reprieve. The angst still sat on my shoulders. I went back to work.

I cleared more dishes from the dining room table. By this point both the baby and I were crying. Or at least, I thought I heard her crying. Whenever I was alone with just my disheveled thoughts to keep me company, all I thought I heard was the sound of her crying. She’d given me sleepless nights, sore breasts from her constant feedings, and an unending stream of tears.

Those days, I spent my alone time wanting to tear at and pull off the invisible thing I constantly felt weighing on me. It never materialized, but I knew it was there. Only I could sense it.

This feeling of being bound, constantly, to this life, to those around me. To someone other than myself.

I constantly panicked because I realized I was never going to feel free again. I would never belong only to myself again.

I’m sad to admit this is the way I spent my first few years of motherhood. Not every waking moment of it, but many of them. Far too many.  And mostly in silence. Depressed because I felt I had lost the life I had before, and did not know how to articulate it. Or was too ashamed to confess it out loud.

There is no physical autonomy as you raise small children. You are bound to them in a way you’ve not been bound to another person before, save for your own mother. I see the humor in that statement. 

I felt powerless in such a place because I didn’t even have control over my emotions. They were like a horse that was usually reliable, who instead now flailed and fought as its rider sat helpless, trying uselessly to direct the reins again. The me from before was so sure of what she was doing. The new me questioned whether she could weather this change and still recognize herself in the aftermath.

I sank into depression. Part of this was caused by the insidious tentacles of baby-blues.

Being perfectly honest, though, some of my issues were self-induced. I just didn’t know it at the time. I thought my issues lay with a baby who wouldn’t sleep, a toddler who wouldn’t sit still and tasks that wouldn’t stop piling on me.

I was wrong.

I remember when, at last, someone directly asked me how I was doing. I was sitting in church, partially sunk down in my seat, staring off into space. The last thing I wanted was for someone to ask me how I was truly doing when I didn’t have the energy to craft a palatable answer. A friend settled in next to me and I could see her studying my face from the corner of my eye.

I took one look at the pink baby in her car seat, mumbled out something about having “trouble with baby blues or…something,” knowing those words were insubstantial at adequately conveying how I was feeling, but believing they were the words I was supposed to say.

I lost it. Quiet defeat. Just silent brokenness. 

How does one mom do ALL of this?  It’s the unanswerable question for any woman when she begins her parenting journey, and then again at each ensuing step. Each one brings new challenges and hurtles. And it never stops.  At some point, you run out of steam, and you stop with full hands and an empty heart. You give up because it’s all so much and you feel so insufficient.

Then guilt riddles you with condemnation because you know you aren’t enjoying every.single.moment. like you’ve been conditioned to believe you should. You don’t feel like you have the bandwidth to keep your house functioning and the kids alive and your own head above water. All you see when you look around are parents who are thrilled with their new bundle of joy and their yogurt covered lives, and you wonder what’s wrong with you. You worry about what’s rotting you away on the inside piece by piece.

If there is one children’s book that depresses me, and that I honestly cannot understand my children’s affections for, it is “The Giving Tree.” 

The story centers around a tree and a young boy. The young boy plays with the tree when he is a child, but as he grows, he abandons the tree, only returning when he needs something. Apples to sell in town, wood to build a home or a boat so that he can sail away from his problems. The tree offered up whatever she had to the boy, hoping to solve his myriad of problems. Hoping to be the source of all he would ever need.

The boy takes and takes and takes from the tree until the tree is left a stump, and the boy is an old man. At the end of his life, he no longer needs anything, save for company. And they sit together, silently in the forest. Death eminent for the old man, a future of uselessness awaiting the old tree.

Maybe this book confuses me because it also terrifies me.

Is this life? Are we meant to be like the giving tree, whose branches are stripped of their fruit, whose limbs are torn off? Where we are used and cast aside into loneliness, but only until someone arrives and needs just one more thing from us? Drained of resources and life until we are nothing but stumps? Useless. Deformed. Alone.

I had days of gray emptiness, where I stared out of the kitchen window at nothing. Where I cried in the shower, or to myself when no one was around. Sadness seeped unwillingly from me. I could not contain such sorrow, sorrow I could not name, but that had claimed me and the life I knew.

How could there be more in such despair? How is there more in emptiness? How is there meaning in ravaging? How, when I feel like I’m constantly yielding myself, constantly giving of myself, constantly emptying myself to the seeming indifference of others, how and when do I get to feel full and seen and heard and valued?

What’s in it for ME?

God answered me. It took time, but his answer rang out more clearly than a church bell when it pierces the night sky.

I said, what’s in this for me? And He said, I am in it, for you. 

He says that a rugged, bloodied, dirty cross is the only answer. Not a life of perfection, pleasant aesthetics, and certainly not one of personal comfort. When we cling unyielding to this life, when we hold fast to it, we are ultimately left empty. Because it still slips away from us. Because self-preservation is a myth, a deceitful fantasy. Wholly unattainable. A life without meaning and depth or color or hidden joys.

We can hold on to everything we ever have and try to craft a life lived only for ourselves, but we will still lose it in the end.

God says, “when you preserve everything in your name, you cannot serve in MY name.”

Because what’s the point of having a life if you don’t give it away? 

If it wasn’t too beneath Jesus, then how are we any different?

When we stop keeping tabs, it helps us to start keeping better fellowship with The One who gave all.

When I started to let go, dumping my aspirations and daily work at the foot of the cross, seemingly menial tasks and sacrifices but all that I had, and instead gave myself away, – willingly – life breathed anew for me.

When I stopped counting my sacrifices to others and instead offered what I could to God and to family, I found more joy than ever imaginable. When I stopped carrying around my faith like a sort joint, the load became more bearable.

When I stopped living for myself, and instead gave living for the King a try, pieces fell into place. Pieces that I never even knew existed within me. When I didn’t resign myself to this existence, but instead embraced it for what it is and could be, my living became three dimensional.

What I realized about my time is it wasn’t mine to begin with. It is a gift given, so that I may give it to others. How can I not give away a gift that was given to me? How can I refuse to comfort as I have been comforted? To love as I have been loved? Receiving that gift is the first part, the second is giving it away. You don’t realize the weight and worth of it until you give it away, freely.

Don’t we treat our Christ the same way that the boy treated the giving tree? Don’t we take and take and take incessantly? Never satisfied?

Jesus is that giving tree. He gave Himself, He still gives Himself. Of His own accord. He laid His life down willingly and freely. He cut down obstacles and made a path when there was none. He was nailed to the giving tree, where our burdens are to be laid beneath it, and where we can receive all that we need.

And we can take comfort that He won’t ask us to give anything more than He already gave.