Never Cut Down Trees In The Winter

I am an awful gardener… and I do mean AWFUL.  Like, I could kill a cactus in twelve seconds flat by simply looking it its direction.  At my house, everything is an annual.  And if it makes it that long, it’s a fighter…

Many years ago, I heard someone say, “Never cut down trees in the winter.”  Simple as it may be, that statement has stayed with me ever since.  Even still, I am not good at keeping things.  I throw everything away.  If I haven’t had a need for it recently, I get rid of it.  Our society has grown to be pretty similar.  Everything is disposable.  Sadly, even the important things are thrown out with careless disregard.  Few things are treasured; few things are given the loyalty they deserve.

But what does that MEAN, “never cut down trees in the winter?”  Well, it means don’t give up on something just because things look bad right now.  I can think of countless analogies that people have provided through the years that lend truth to that statement—cliché statements that everyone says, but into which no one is really willing to put their faith.  The darkest hour is right before the dawn; you have to endure the rain to see the rainbow… blah, blah, blah.

The fact that commitment to anything is basically non-existent these days makes me sad.  If something gets hard, we quit.  We walk out.  We find something else.  Here’s an idea that could use some revisiting, “Perseverance is the ability to honor the commitment long after the emotion has passed.”  It is easy to continue in something we like, something we feel good about.  But it counts the most when we DON’T feel good about it, when we don’t see a reason to hold on any longer, when we feel like quitting… but we don’t quit.  And one day, we wake up, and somehow we have made it through.  The dawn has come, the rainbow is there, and the tree that was dead in the winter is now showing a few shades of green…