On the old front porch I stand and look across the narrow valley.
I scan the ridgelines of the mountain slopes facing me. Trees bared by winter winds dot the ridges like long, winding lines of vertical toothpicks.
My eyes never tire of traversing those ridges – mentally, my fingertips stride effortlessly along the ridgetops – surrogate footsteps taking me high upon the mountain. I feel at home in this place amid the blue ridges between Carolina and Tennessee.
But today, my gaze is more specific. There is only one tree of interest to me.
I am looking for my crooked tree.
And, it seems to be hiding.
A blue haze creeps into the valley but does not obscure the smoke rising from the chimney stack of the buildings across the road. I try to imagine the sawmill and a tiny house, not much more than a shack, that stood there 80 years ago before clearing the land to make room for modern ventures.
The porch I stand on is newer than the little house that it serves. I wish I could picture the small white house constructed from a Sears and Roebuck kit in 1942 that formed the core of this place. This house is the homeplace where my husband grew up.
He considers himself a bonified, certified Southern Applachian American and has a birth certificate to prove it. It is the only place that he ever knew as a home until he moved to South Carolina, a newly graduated engineer from the University of Tennessee.
For a vagabond like myself, that is hard to comprehend.
The vista from my poplar cove
My crooked tree is difficult to spot from the front porch, so I move toward a higher vantage point above the sprawling yard and slope behind the house. I know this spot well. The Mulberry tree and the twin Poplars at the edge of our woodland cove stand to mark it.
Today the rains have passed. The morning sun at its winter declination pierces the damp darkness of the cove with brilliant shafts of light, casting a magical aura around me. I am present in my private sanctuary – our quiet place that has often solaced our souls. The times we have sat here, coffee, and Bible in hand, are now beyond counting.
Twelve years ago, one could not walk to this place next to the Mulberry. Brambles, multi-flora rose, and a pile of asphalt left over from repaving the driveway years ago all needed to be cleared. The poison ivy still must be kept at bay. A path that we cleared moves alongside the woodland cove toward the densely forested, low ridges that surround this few acres of Southern Appalachian mountain homeplace.
I turn to face the ridges across the narrow valley. My view is broader here. I strain to see between the trees to the ridgelines in the northwest. I take pictures with my phone and enlarge the photo to search more deeply. I think I see it faintly, but I really can’t be sure.
Somewhere my crooked tree is there waiting to be found again – of that much, I am sure. That tree has been my silent friend for at least a decade – a marker to remind me of my need for God’s grace and intervention in my life. It has faithfully called us to pray for our family and future.
Finding home
This spot and this homeplace is no longer a neutral place for me. It is emotionally laden – full of memories enriched by God’s grace and His working – at His own pace – in our lives for the past 22 and a half years.
I am deeply aware, as is my husband, that
there is no earthly reason for me to be here, today or any day.
Settling in the South was never in my life plan. Embracing life in the Southern Appalachian Mountains held no appeal for me – nor did its music or its rural mountain ways.
However, I have always been fascinated by trees – big trees, tall trees, barren old trees – and yes, especially crooked trees. As a young girl growing up in Phoenix, Arizona, it was a memorable day when I was first permitted to ride my bike to “the big tree” with my sister and her friends. My mother did not need to ask clarifying questions about which tree. There was only one big tree in the entire neighborhood.
My introduction to the South was painfully abrupt. My four daughters and I disembarked the plane in Atlanta with still fresh leis around our necks, the traditional parting gift from our friends in Hawaii. Unexpected life events had landed me in a place as foreign as any of the countries where I had lived or visited during the prior 20 years.
Now 27 years later, I still swallow twice before answering the question, “Where are you from?” As much as I have tried to blend innocuously with the South, there is still a suspicion among some that I am not truly of Southern origin. “It’s complicated” is my first mental reaction. Once I was a vagabond, a pilgrim, and a migrant. Now, I have found a home here.
So, I smile and say: “I am a late-blooming, Southern transplant.“
First Spotting of the crooked tree
I can’t pinpoint the exact day or year that we first spotted the crooked tree atop the ridge. Sometime between 2005 and 2007, we noticed it while walking and surveying the work to be done on this property. Difficult decisions were facing us, plus a disagreement among family members. We believed it was time to let this mountain place go to someone else in the family so that we could move ahead with other life goals and mission plans. We saw no other solution to restore peace within the family.
When we saw that crooked tree, we stopped and prayed aloud together for our complicated family. From that day on, during every visit, we would pull our chairs up the hillside to the best spot to see the crooked tree while we took a coffee, Bible, prayer break to start or end our day.
To be fascinated by a single crooked tree in a county that is 75 percent Forest service land seems odd to some. Millions of people travel hundreds and thousands of miles to enjoy the splendors of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park that borders Graham County, North Carolina. My crooked tree does not share the renown of its giant brothers and cousins that comprise the virgin timbers of the Joyce Kilmer Forest not far from here.
Although I treasure those other forests and often befriend their pathways, my crooked tree has made an indelible impression on my soul.
It speaks to and of my life – the bent edges and imperfections that life wears into each of our beings – the strained and broken places in our relationships.
I cannot sit or stand on this hillside in its view without being called to consider my ways and to consider the ways of my God – my Savior and Friend, Jesus, the Christ, whose nativity we just celebrated twelve days ago.
Wrapping up the holidays on Epiphany
Twelve days ago, we were at home in South Carolina, preparing to host the adult children and grandchildren that make up our blended, diverse family to celebrate Christmas. Twenty of the twenty-eight members gathered for two days of eating and activities. Noisy, busy, wide-open – from 5-year old to 65-year old – all fully engaged in the business of celebrating life in the context of the holiday season.
For most Americans, the holiday season ends after Christmas, and decorations come down to be packed away for another year. Well, perhaps I should say, most decorations come down. There are those houses (at least there are in the countryside around Clemson, SC) where a Santa stays on the roof all year, and colored lights bless the night equally in winter and summer. Although we eagerly sang “…on the twelfth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me…” earlier in the holiday season; by the time the twelfth day arrives, our Christmas cheer has waned.
Epiphany’s Reflections
The Twelfth Day, Epiphany, the Feast of the Magi, Three Kings Day – call it whatever you wish – arrives will no fanfare in this mountain town. My friends in the Basque region of Spain tell of the townspeople gathering to watch the torch-lit procession of three colorfully clad Kings descending the mountainside. Friends where I once lived in Athens, Greece, celebrate with sweet treats, parades, dancing, and the traditional blessing of the waters. One lucky lad, of the many who make the dive, will be the honored one who retrieves the cross thrown into the water by the Priest and all be share in the blessing. Somehow this tradition is connected to John’s baptism of Jesus that folklore holds was on this same day.
Our own celebration of Epiphany will be private and quietly simple, like the other days between Christmas and Epiphany. We reserved one treat for this day, our traditional Jewel Cake served with, of course, hot coffee, good conversation, and maybe a bit more music to play and sing together.
Epiphany celebrates the visit of the magi recorded in Matthew’s gospel and commemorates the revelation of God incarnate in Jesus, the Christ, to all the world. So, our meditations from Advent spill over to our devotional time for Epiphany:
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God…The true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world…the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.” John 1:1-14 (ESV).
Our private annual New Year’s retreat
Coincidentally this year, the arrival of Epiphany marks the last day of our personal new year’s retreat. It is almost time to close up the house on the hillside, pack up the truck and head back down the mountain. Our destination is South Carolina, where the work that was left undone a week ago awaits our attention.
Just as reflecting on Advent in the four weeks preceding Christmas has repeatedly redeemed the Christmas holiday season for me, the twelve days between Christmas and Epiphany provide a reflective time of renewal for me.
For my husband and I, as a couple, it is a period that we protect. This new tradition that we cherish is our annual, private, New Year’s retreat. After the last house guest leaves following Christmas, we head to his North Carolina mountain homeplace.
Music accompanies all our activities regardless of whether we find ourselves North or South in the Carolinas. So, for this trip, we loaded the truck with a newly adopted ¾ standup bass, a guitar, and two mandolins. Hiking gear came along for our New Year’s Day hike (weather permitting). Since we plan to read, study, and find time for me to write, there are three boxes of books, several writing pads, a couple of computers, and a bunch of leftovers from Christmas entertaining.
Oh, and there was one other essential – a replacement Keurig machine. Because, for us, all long, quiet talks require hot coffee. There has been no shortage of conversation topics, and my cup has stayed full, literally and proverbially.
Reflect – Reset – Refocus – Revise
Our reflections during this time reset our focus for the coming year. Our reflections go more in-depth than traditional resolutions for a new year. We look for insight and guidance as we read scripture aloud together, pray aloud together, and talk for hours while I jot down notes. We review lessons learned from the past year. These times spent reading and discussing scripture and praying together have impacted our relationship and influenced our daily lives in positive, constructive ways.
Learning to sing and play music together with traditional mountain songs and acoustical instruments invigorates our souls and our worship of God. Learning to pace and time our music to be in sync with each other also helps us pace and time our relational skills.
Revising our vision
Some years it becomes clear by the end of our retreat that God is requiring us to again revise plans and goals due to life changes and family events that have occurred. Sometimes it required us to discard everything that we thought about what we were called to go and do – the mission that we had always planned to pursue.
That was the case eight years ago. My husband had taken early retirement so that we could start the mission work we had always planned for our future. Within weeks and without warning, the care of both my parents became an immediate necessity. Be “ready to go and ready to stay,” a wise friend had counseled us years before.
Caring meant staying – again.
The memory of that time is fresh in our minds this year because the week before Christmas, my husband cautiously made his second official attempt at retirement from engineering and project management work in the nuclear energy world. Since it is a year earlier than planned, our list of adjustments lengthened proportionally. Unexpected opportunities open as we wait, pray, and seek new ways to be useful and purposeful as we grow older.
Our perplexed wonder
We share a perplexed wonder at how we came to be here, together, at this place and at this time, in the course of our two, once extraordinarily different, life journeys. Each retreat time offers deep gratitude to the grace of God. We remain convinced that He alone is the reason for our blessings, not our futile efforts. We know full well whose faithfulness and steadfast love it was that guided and protected us through difficulties, detours, and sometimes, heart-rending circumstances.
Ironically, it is hard to leave this place that I once failed to value. As we traversed down the winding roads, the valleys, and pass through the mountain gaps, my thoughts returned to the crooked tree.
Although I had missed the comfort of seeing my crooked tree again,
I realized that it held one more lesson to teach me.
That crooked tree had once stood apart from the surrounding trees – its deformity was evident to any who took the time to ponder life along the ridgeline.
But during the past few years, it has gotten progressively harder to spot. The trees below our house have grown during the past 8 years. They are taller, broader, and denser now. The ridgeline has also grown during those years, with other trees beginning to fill in the gaps around and above the crooked tree.
Perhaps the crooked tree’s bentness is covered by trees that snug close to it. I look at the magnified picture again. This time I am pretty sure that I see a resemblance of the tree that used to be my small crooked tree.
If that is my tree, then it has grown remarkably too, taller and maybe even sprouting a new branch or two.
The obvious lesson
The lesson seems boldly clear to me.
- We are stronger together than separately.
- We are more beautiful together when we blend and lend our strength to one another.
- God graciously grows us in community with other believers, in companionship, with Him, and with those He calls His children.
We were born to celebrate life and light.
Brokenness comes along the way, not to be celebrated but endured as purposeful. Its lessons, however, should be understood and treasured.
Our path through brokenness should continually move us and grow us toward wholeness and restoration. We cannot achieve that on our own. It comes as a gift to those who seek it and receive it from the giver of true life and true light and full joy – because a Savior truly was born for us on a day two millenniums ago that we now celebrate on December 25th as Christmas.
As the miles pass by, I am reminded of two phrases – the first from my Bible and the second from the wisdom shared by a Southern mama – and smile contentedly.
He makes all things new again.
It’s a long road, honey, but it’ll take a turn.
Blessings on Epiphany, January 6th, 2019 – Susan Millsaps
