Pruning Time

To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven...a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted...a time to keep, and a time to cast away... --Ecclesiastes 3:1-6

I've been spending a lot of time lately sitting at my bedroom desk whittling away at my master's thesis. Being a fan of natural light and the outdoors, I've positioned my desk so as to look out one of my windows. I have a lovely view of the sky--generally blue these days--bordered by Mount Timpanogos and, until recently, bisected by three tall cottonwood trees. After one of those trees was knocked over in a strong storm, crashing down on a neighboring roof, our groundskeepers decided to remove the other two. As I watched them hacking off the branches yesterday and listened to them fall to the ground with a resounding crack, I honestly felt a sense of loss. I liked those trees; it was a nice distraction to look up for a moment and see the wind ruffling their highest leaves as the branches gently swayed.

I tend to be like that--holding on to something simply because it's familiar and then mourning once it's gone. I'm not exactly a pack rat, but I even have a hard time sifting through my things and deciding what I'm ready to throw away or send to DI. Everything I own and everything that regularly surrounds me has some sort of memory attached to it. Getting rid of something often requires me to painfully extract the memory from the object before I am prepared to let it go. Some of the memories haven't been looked at in ages, but they are still there; the nostalgia often gives me a stomachache.

I've been having an especially hard time with this process lately, because I'm not just throwing out objects. In the very near future, I'll be leaving the university scene indefinitely. I'll be moving on from Provo--where I've lived for nearly ten years--and venturing out into the wide world. I've had the sense that I need to leave hanging over me for a long time, but when my exact destination fell into place earlier this week, the certainty of separation was surprisingly sharp: at once exhilarating and terrifying, painful and yet peaceful.

It all makes me ask the question: why in the world do we ever put down roots in the first place when we know that at some point, we will have to experience the pain of moving on?

About a year ago, I came across an article in the BYU alumni magazine which has permanently changed my understanding of investing in my current situation--of sending down roots even when I know they might be pulled up very soon. The author referenced a group of early Latter-day Saints who were in a moment of transition. But rather than keep their wagons packed and be at the ready to move on, the Lord encouraged them to "act upon this land as for years"--to put down some roots, both figuratively and literally, until they were called to go elsewhere.

In the end, we make connections, send down roots, build our lives in the midst of change because we cannot afford to miss the chance to grow. And even if the connections we make are pruned down to the barest branches, the experiences we had will live within us forever. Outward things may disappear, but the memories and the learning continue to propel our lives forward to new growth and greater strength. Likewise, if we stubbornly hold on to things once we have a knowledge that it is the season to prune, we will never become what the Lord intends us to be.

So in spite of the nostalgia-induced stomachaches and the pain of casting away something you've dared to invest in, here's to living life the way it was intended to be: a process of learning how to love and when to let go.