There is beauty underneath it all

I  attacked an overgrown tree in the yard.

Clippers in hand, I set out to rid my yard of the unsightly mess. I watched it all last year, trying to figure out what it was, waiting for it to bloom into something beautiful.

It never did. It just got uglier and uglier and uglier. 

It seemed to be a mixture of several bushes, some thorny and prickly, making it impossible to mow around it without drawing blood. 

So, I decided to cut it down — all of it — and start from scratch. First one branch, then another, ‘til I stopped for just a moment and looked.

What remained was pretty.

Hidden in all that mess was something beautiful. I almost missed it because all I could see was the mess which had wrapped itself around it; all I could see were the burdens which weighed it down. 

Each day is an opportunity to become who you truly are. Your greatest challenge, everyone’s single greatest challenge in life, is to discover who you would be in your highest vision of yourself, and then to become that person.

I don’t know if what’s left is the tree or the weed, but whatever it is, it’s free.

© Photo by Judy Mae Bingman

I walk around the house to look at it almost every day and giggle to myself.

Like me, like you, once the burdens were cut away, that tree was transformed. Its load lightened, it seems to stand taller, prouder.

We carry our burdens much like that tree. Our shoulders droop, as if the weight of the world were pressing down squarely on our back. And, many times, it is. Still, we don’t have to let it fester and grow uncontrolled. 

Cut down the things weighing you down, those things which make you weary, make you droop and bend. Haul them off and clear them away. 

Find the real you hidden in the middle of all that, then lift your head and stand tall.