Under-Appreciated Landscaper

Elementary school science classes:
The water cycle, model volcanoes, and worksheets. Mounds and mounds of worksheets.

Although I grew to understand and appreciate science later in life, K-6 science was inundated with worksheets. Hands-on projects were for the “big kids” in middle- and high school. Except that one time we used live worms in fourth grade to diagram their anatomy, and I grabbed a paper bag and faked hyperventilation so I wouldn’t be forced to touch any of their slimy, writhing bodies. 
It worked.

But out of all the stacks of science worksheets comprising my first years in public education, what has stuck with me over the years are the two general categories of trees: deciduous and coniferous.

For some reason, those hefty, awkward words nestled snugly in my ten-year-old brain, even though I couldn’t pronounce them at the time, and never left.

Deciduous trees have leaves, and coniferous trees don’t. They have needles.

I think we all know that, but sometimes we forget the words describing leafy trees and needly ones. And for the past fourteen years—even last week—I’ve dispensed my highly technical biological lingo wherever I've gone to young and old alike. 

Now, these terms have never actually proven useful in my life, but one of my bucket list items is to be on Jeopardy someday.

And I was at peace with how I was impacting the world in this way until my parents called last weekend.

While driving through northwest Montana, they called me. “Renée! Fall is beautiful out here! The pine trees are a gorgeous yellow!”

Yellow?

“No, no, those aren’t pine trees. They can’t be. They’re some other kind of deciduous tree. You know, because deciduous trees lose their leaves and--" 

“No, they are pine trees! No leaves here!”

I was confused. I thought they were confused. Because, of course, everyone knows that leaves change colors, and leaves are on deciduous trees, not on conifers. Needles can’t change colors. That’s kind of the meaning of the word evergreen. 

“I think it’s a tamarack,” my parents mused. They insisted, so I Googled.

And I sat dumbfounded. Image after image of yellow pine trees filled up my phone’s screen. I scrolled desperately through the websites, hoping that I had typed “tamarack” incorrectly or that it was just a bad joke. Then I saw phrases like “actually do change color in fall” and “one of few conifers which do so” and “under-appreciated landscape tree.”

The one piece of knowledge I had retained from years of elementary science: shattered.

The killer was when I read the term deciduous conifer.

What a contradiction in terms: here’s a pine that acts like some leaf bush and sheds its needles. The only distinguishing mark of each type of tree, and here they are, meshed together in a tamarack! 

I’m only a little perturbed.

The very thing that made those terms easy to remember for me was that they represented such differences.

They’re clear. They’re distinct. If you have one, you don’t have the other.

At least that’s what I thought. Oh, those terms still hold, but what do you do with contradictions? With exceptions? How can something that’s classified one way retain properties of its opposite?

The day I received my myth-debunking phone call (arboreally speaking) from my parents was the day before I saw tamaracks for myself in living color. That’s because I joined them on the drive back to Montana to start another segment of my life. 

Now, the embarrassing part of all this is that I’m actually from Montana. But in my defense, tamaracks don’t grow in my region; they only grow in the northwest parts (and Canada and Alaska and in most northern states…), and they only change color in the fall, and I’ve never traveled abroad in the Big Sky State in autumn because I’ve generally been in school at this time of year. Upon further research, I found that cities in Montana actually hold tamarack festivals every fall to celebrate the beauty of these colorful pines. Not that you have to hold that over my head; please don’t. 

And as I drove, the brilliant gold of the tamaracks was sometimes so bright that I thought the sun was shining on the mountains ahead; but when I looked at the sky, it was still a dense, foggy gray. 

I smiled and shook my head. How? And why?

I’ve been asking those two questions about life recently. Beyond pine forests, I’ve had some conifer-turned-deciduous situations come to the forefront of my life. Situations running rife with contradictions. 

And they may not be real “contradictions” in the sense that contradictions lead to a faulty conclusion or cancel each other out; but I’ve seen the unexpected come up, and I’ve seen opposites co-exist in uncomfortable ways.

I thought that if a tree was a conifer, it was impossible for that tree to change colors.
I thought that if a relationship had Godly beginnings, it could only lead to marriage.
I thought that if I am called to a life of missions, it would mean entering the mission field and never leaving.

The pine trees of my life have been shedding their needles left and right.

Yeah, maybe I’ve got some elementary-school thinking still straggling along in my brain. 

I had all these end-goals in mind, and I assumed that fairly direct paths led to them.
And yet, how many situations do we apply similar thinking to? 
Because I perceive [this or that] to be God’s will for my life, there should be no detours until I get there.
And if there are detours, we have a tendency to assume something is wrong. Because after all, contradictions can’t co-exist, can they?

What started out as a tree-observation turned into meaningful soul-searching for me as I drove. And my 12-hour drive afforded me time to think.

I thought about the book of Ezekiel. I’ve been studying it recently, and more than any other prophetic book in the Old Testament, it’s always made me raise the question, “Why?” 
From the words of God to the demands placed on Ezekiel to the actions of the people, I’ve often thought that the book of Ezekiel appears contradictory at worst, unexpected at best. 

Starting in the late 500s BC, God allowed about 10,000 Jews, including the prophet, to be exiled to Babylon more for spiritual rebellion than political rebellion, although both were present. 

For twenty-two years, Ezekiel demonstrated a series of extreme, symbolic acts to show the Israelites God’s intentions for dealing with them, starting with the unalterable fact that God’s judgment was coming. 

Acts like reconstructing a model of Jerusalem on a clay brick (4:1-3). Lying on one side of his body for inordinate amounts of time (4:4-8). Eating a vegetarian’s diet (4:9-17). Cutting off his hair from head and beard and burning it, slashing it with a sword, and scattering it to the wind (5:1-4).

And then the symbolic went to the literal (while still retaining symbolic value). God told Ezekiel that He would take away Ezekiel’s wife, and that Ezekiel was not permitted to mourn or show any grief (24:15-27).

Wasn’t this last act, two years before the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem, intense enough to spark a change of heart in the Israelites? Shouldn’t such an act deter, rather than lead to, impending judgment?

Ezekiel was unquestionably righteous and divinely called of God for his prophetic ministry at a crucial and devastating time in Israel’s history; shouldn’t he have been spared from such adverse situations?

I’ve raised the why? question numerous times while reading the Ezekiel, but it wasn’t until the tamarack-thick drive that I noticed a commonality in the why-questions I’m currently asking:
They’re all people-centered.
From trees to life goals to exiled Israelites, what I mean is that these questions are generated when I focus on the situations rather than the orchestrator of the situations:

Why is it that opposite characteristics can coexist in a tree? Why is it that my goals aren’t being achieved according to the timeline I constructed? Why is it that Ezekiel had to live such a profoundly extreme lifestyle?

The answer to these whys is found in the book of Ezekiel.

Nowhere else in Scripture is the phrase, “then they will know that I am the Lord” so predominant, so repetitive, as in Ezekiel. Sixty-five times that phrase or a variant of it appears in his book. 

The theme of the sovereignty of God echoes over all the chapters of Ezekiel, through the crushing blows to the temple, through the oracles of judgment against Israel and its enemy nations, and through the hope-drenched visions of a restored Jerusalem and temple. God’s sovereignty pervades everything in and beyond the sphere of human existence.

The Lord, through Ezekiel, says over and over, “I’m not doing this for your sake, Israelites; I’m doing it for mine. I’m doing it so that you and all the nations around you know that I am the one true God.” 

And what was He doing? Destroying and restoring. Opposites. But both were necessary to assert His superiority over the deities of the pagan nations, to prove His faithfulness to His covenant people, and to demonstrate His sovereignty. A sovereignty that transcends cultural mores and and group-think and standards of what is right and what signifies blessings. 

The exile of God’s people to Babylon, the destruction of the temple—these weren’t just about those people living at that time. It wasn’t even just about God’s people for all time, the universal Church: it was about God Himself.

God’s plan for His people-turned-exiles was to endure punishments and, later, experience restoration, not because of the people they were as much as because He was demonstrating His character. Not exactly what the people had in mind when they felt the weight of God’s hand in judgment on their lives, I’m sure.

He also has more in mind for our lives—what happens and where, what dies and what lives, what changes and what stays. And even though it may appear contradictory or not conducive to the goals we have for ourselves, we would do well to remember that God has other and greater purposes for our lives than we do. 

We may enter into something with a desired outcome, thinking that God couldn't possibly have something different in mind; but when the actual outcome is different from our desire, our gut reaction shouldn’t be to surmise that it could not have been the will of God. That something’s not adding up.

Oh, but it is. And it’s adding up on God’s calculator, not on ours, because He calculates from infinity while we fumble with about as many numbers as we have fingers. He’s calculating with variables taken from the entire scope of human history, and all that’s within our reach to manipulate is our present—not even our own past or future. He’s doing more than we can see. Even when we think that where we currently find ourselves couldn’t possibly be what God had in mind.

What I've noticed in Scripture, and in my own life, is that God often shares an end-result (such as the future restoration of Israel) but doesn't divulge all the steps leading up to it.

When things go differently than we planned, as sons and daughters of God we can remember that God’s purposes are different than and higher than ours. And they involve more than just us personally. What a comforting thought as we weave the seeming inconsistencies into a cohesive whole. And it's not just a feel-good wish; it's fact based on the principle that God will act in the best interest of His children because He is sovereign.

*  * *

I’ve taken a liking to tamarack trees since this weekend. No longer do I bristle at the fact that they are a contradiction in terms, a disappointer of studious children. I see them more as a reminder of the sovereignty of the God who splashes uncharacteristic splotches of color over my life when I think everything should be hued and ordered in a dull green tint.

So, never under-appreciate a landscape tree. Or the seeming contradictions in your life.

Watching pine trees lose their needles—and being okay with it—

Renée