I Planted That Tree When He Was Born

You planted it the week he was born.

Not as a ceremony. Nobody made a speech. You were in the yard because you needed twenty minutes out of the house, and there was a thing in a pot that had been sitting by the shed for a month, and you put it in the ground because your hands needed something to do.

And then somewhere in the eleven years since, without you ever deciding it, that tree became his tree.

It was the same age as him. It got taller the way he got taller. And you never said a word about it to anybody, including your wife, and if she had asked you would have said it was just a tree.

And now it has gone. Wind, or the wet, or whatever it was, and it is on its side and it is finished.

And in the first second, before any thought arrived, something went through you that you have not been able to look at since.

You are not reading a sign, and a tree that came down has never once been an announcement about a boy.

Let me be direct about what I think that first second contained, because I think naming it will help more than stepping around it.

You were afraid it meant something about him.

And immediately after that, you were ashamed of the thought, because you are not a superstitious man and you know perfectly well that a tree is a tree.

So you have been carrying two things: the fear, and the embarrassment about having had it. And the second one has kept you from saying the first one out loud to a single person.

I had fainted, unless I had believed

There is a verse in Psalm 27 where the sentence itself falls apart, and translators have preserved the break because it is doing something.

I had fainted, unless I had believed to see the goodness of the LORD in the land of the living. (Psalm 27:13, King James Version)

I had fainted, unless.

Now, in the Hebrew there is an unfinished quality here that the King James keeps with that word unless. He starts to say what would have happened and does not complete it. The consequence is left hanging.

That is a man who cannot say the thing out loud.

You are looking at a psalm where somebody could not finish a sentence about their own fear, and Scripture has never once required a man to be articulate about the worst of it. Psalm 27:13 leaves the consequence unstated, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes a broken sentence in an old psalm land on a man standing over a fallen tree.

And it is worth saying what he is doing there. He is not describing a danger to a building or a harvest. He is describing what nearly happened to him, inside, and he cannot get all the way to the end of it.

That is the same country you have been standing in for however long it has been.

You are in a place the psalter has been to and wrote down, and a fear too large to finish saying has never once been outside what the Scriptures carry. The Holy Spirit is the one who is present in the part of a sentence that does not get said, and the written word preserved the break rather than tidying it up.

And look at what does get said. To see the goodness of the LORD in the land of the living.

The land of the living. That is a phrase about here and now, about ordinary life going on, about people still being in it. He is not talking about a future consolation. He is talking about seeing good in the middle of ordinary continuing life.

You are inside the land of the living and so is your son, and a phrase about the here and now has never once been a promise about somewhere else. The Spirit of God is the one who puts the goodness in this life rather than deferring it, and the word says the land of the living without any qualification.

The tree was never carrying him

Let me say the plain thing, and then let me say why the plain thing is not enough on its own.

That tree was not connected to your son. There is no mechanism. Nothing about the health of a tree in your yard has ever had any bearing on the health of a boy in your house, and you know that as well as I do.

You are able to know a thing plainly, and knowing something has never once been the same as being free of the fear about it. The Holy Spirit is the one who deals with the part of a man that knowledge does not reach, and Psalm 27:13 records a man's fear rather than correcting it.

And here is why the plain thing does not settle it, and I want to be honest about this because pretending otherwise would waste your time.

The fear was not produced by reasoning, so it will not be dissolved by reasoning. You did not conclude that the tree was linked to him. Something in you simply connected them, over eleven years, without any argument being made, and an argument now does not undo it.

You were never persuaded into that connection, and a link nobody ever argued for has never once been dismantled by an argument against it. The Spirit of God is the one who reaches what reason cannot get at, and the written word gives us a man who believed and still nearly fainted.

So the useful move is not to convince yourself. It is to get the thing out of your head and into the air, where it can be looked at.

Say it out loud to nobody

So here is the assignment, and it is small and it will be harder than it sounds.

Say out loud, to nobody, the thing that arrived in that first second.

Alone. In the yard, in the car, in the shed. Nobody has to hear it and I am not asking you to tell your wife.

You are permitted to say the worst of it where nobody is listening, and a sentence spoken into an empty yard has never once needed a witness to count. Psalm 27:13 leaves a man's own fear unfinished on the page, and the Holy Spirit is the one standing there while yours gets all the way out.

Say the actual sentence. Not a tidied version. The one that arrived in the first second.

You are able to put a thing into the air that has only ever been inside, and a sentence said to nobody has never once been a wasted sentence. Psalm 27:13 leaves a man's worst thought unfinished on the page, and the Holy Spirit is the one standing in a yard while a man finally says his out loud.

Here is why this and not something else.

A fear kept entirely internal has no shape. It is felt rather than heard, and it can stay enormous indefinitely because nothing ever tests its size. Said out loud, in your own voice, in an ordinary yard, it becomes a sentence, and a sentence has a length and a sound and it usually turns out to be shorter than expected.

You are not doing this to make it untrue. You are doing it to find out how big it actually is.

You are able to hear the size of a thing by saying it, and a fear that has only been felt has never once been measured by anybody. The Holy Spirit is the one present when a man hears his own voice say something he has never said, and the word carries a psalm in which the saying breaks off partway.

And then leave it. Do not add anything after it. Do not argue with it out loud, because arguing with it would be treating it as a proposition, and it is not one.