Roots of Life

Yesterday my phone rings and "surprise" it was my son. Ummmmm, as with most children one must wonder, why the call today??? What's up, what's wrong....why as parents to we do that? Well, that is another thought and not the one I have for today here. It seems that my son has been doing lots of landscape work at his in-laws and one of the requests was to remove three 22 year old rhodadendrum plants. Well, you can imagine, that after 22 years these plants were not longer plants, but trees. After much work of removing these trees and then loading them into the back of his pick-up truck he couldn't figure out what to do with them. OK, that's it, that is why the phone call. "Mom, would you like these trees, I don't want to just have them die?" Of course I replied with a "yes". The trees then begin a long journey from their original home to a new home. Down the highway at 70 miles per hour and the leaves were looking like they had gone through a tornado, or at the least a huge wind storm. With that I get the call that the delivery time would be longer, as he felt bad for the "poor little guys" and had changed route to a country road. The trees are now in our yard awaiting huge new holes to be dug and to once again stretched their roots in the ground. I know, this is a long story to get to my point. If everyone showed the same compassion for the "roots" of their lives as my son has shown for these trees. How is it we so often forget that our families are our roots...that those roots are what gave us the balance to be able to stand on our own in life. Sometimes our roots go deep into life and other times they run shallow to the surface, but we all have roots. Our roots of life come from friends, teachers, and people that just affect our lives. We have strong roots, cause when the wind blows hard, we still need to be able to stand. We are often like "the poor little guys", and wonder how we can survive what life has handed to us....but we always manage to...so for today...think about your life roots and be grateful for all your life has gone through to be the strong person you are today.