Straight up

In the wee hours while the house sleeps and before the busyness of the day begins, I pray, all alone in the quiet. Not wanting to rush the morning, I keep the lights low and open the drapes. Staring out the french doors, the bare trees against the stark gray sky look forlorn and beautiful. Apple cinnamon tea warming my insides, something in the view strikes me as odd.
That tree across the street, it's not right. You can't see it when dressed in green, but the anomaly is obvious now. That big branch must have been lopped off at some point. The rest of the tree reaches out, organic and branchy, and looks natural. But right there, off the main trunk, the growth pattern changes.
Those branches, where the tree was cut, they're growing straight up.
Not out in twisted little y's like the rest of the tree.
Up from the place of the cut, like fingers reaching to the sky, the branches break form.
Odd.
They're out of place. They don't look right. They mar the symmetry of the tree.
The branch was cut off but still alive. Greedy for sunlight, it grew straight up. It didn't know any better. It didn't know that to fit in, it should grow out- not up.
The branch shot vertically through the other branches, ignoring the pattern of the tree, searching for the life giving sun.
As I continue studying the tree, I see beauty in the oddity...
beauty in the desperation for light...
beauty in the reckless abandon of form...
Oh, to be that desperate; willing to risk conformity, willing to look out of place, willing to be the oddity to find light and life, willing to go from a place of pain, from a place pruning and shoot straight through all the crap to find the Light.

Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the LORD rises upon you. ~the prophet Isaiah

He grew up before him like a tender shoot, and like a root out of dry ground. He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. ~the prophet Isaiah

Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. ~Paul to the Romans

Hear me, LORD, and answer me,
for I am poor and needy.
Guard my life, for I am faithful to you;
save your servant who trusts in you.
You are my God; have mercy on me, Lord,
for I call to you all day long.
Bring joy to your servant, Lord,
for I put my trust in you. ~King David


**photos: I'd give my right arm (well, maybe that's extreme, ok, my wisdom teeth) for a decent camera...as you can tell, I took them both with our crappy camera. You can kinda see the fingers...it's more obvious in real life. Also, because the morning I wrote this the batteries in the said crappy camera were dead, I took the pics the next day and the sky was no longer stark & gray. But hopefully you get the idea.**