Is that the tree or the bark talking?

For one of the three campfires that we had this past weekend, we were in need of additional wood to keep the fire going. My friend and her son, who I mentioned in my last blog post, went off to look for additional wood. She was telling me later, as we were standing together on a dock, looking out across the water and at the trees that were standing in the water, how she and her son had come upon a tree that they initially thought was dead because of its appearance and the heavy layers of bark, but when they went to break off the branches, they realized that underneath all that heavy bark, the tree was still very much alive.

She commented that the bark seemed to serve as a protection for the tender part of the tree underneath.

As I stood there and absorbed her words, I realized that I wasn’t unlike that tree. That like that tree, I had built up layers of bark to cover the tender part underneath, as a way of protecting it. But that those heavy layers of bark, which served as a way of protecting the most vital and important parts of myself, caused me to look, and even sometimes feel, and act, dead when there was actually still a lot of life left under all that bark.

But it took stripping off the bark to find the beautiful tree that was hidden under that protective covering.

The thing with stripping bark though, is that once the bark is gone, the tree doesn’t look the same. It doesn’t operate the same.

It’s more tender in spots.

It’s more prone to the effects of the rain, and the wind, and the insects, and the birds.

It’s more vulnerable to things that might hurt it.

But without all that bark weighing it down, it’s also free to grow in ways it wasn’t before.

And that’s a good thing.

But it’s a different thing.

The birds and the squirrels aren’t all going to understand or appreciate that new tree when it doesn’t look or feel the same and when they were perfectly content with the old one. They aren’t going to recognize that it’s actually the same tree that it has always been, but is just a truer form of itself than it was with all that protective covering.

The same is true for people. Shedding bark can be a good thing. It can reveal the beauty that was hidden by all the protection.

But when you shed the bark that people recognize as who you are, not everyone is going to understand or appreciate the newness of who you are underneath.

You’re going to be more tender in spots.

You’re going to be more vulnerable to the changing weather and to the animals which might cause you harm.

But once that bark comes off, you’re not going to want it to go back on.

Because it’s heavy.

And it’s restrictive.

And the binding keeps you from being able to grow the way that you should.

Without all that heavy bark restricting your movements, you can grow into who and what you should have been all along. You can reach your branches to the sky and you can spread into places you weren’t able to go before when you were so weighed down with all those layers of protection.

And honestly? That bark wouldn’t go back on if you tried.

Because sometimes, in the process of falling away, the bark breaks and doesn’t fit back together the way it did before it broke.

As the tree underneath expands and grows, the bark won’t quite cover the area it once did.

And unless you’ve got a really good industrial glue, that stuff isn’t going to stick back anyway.

Because the tree underneath is too smooth. Too vibrant. And too alive to allow for the old bark to stick the way it did before.

And, truthfully, why would you want it to?

Because the process of stripping off bark isn’t an easy one.

It’s painful.

It’s time consuming.

There’s a lot of lost sap and scraped and exposed limbs that happen in the process.

But the part of the tree that you uncover when you remove all the bark that made it appear to be more dead than alive? It is so beautiful. Why would you want to cover that beauty again?

But when the needle sharp drops of rain come, or the high winds that bend those tender branches and blow off those vulnerable leaves, and when the woodpecker and squirrels and other birds come with their sharp nails and their sharp beaks to scratch and peck that vulnerable core, it’s easy to miss the bark that did such a good job of protection for so very long.

And it is easy to start to build up new layers of bark to make things hurt just a little less, to make things feel a little less scary, to keep things that might hurt at just a little more distance. 

But when that temptation comes to build back up those layers of protection to cover the tender and beautiful core underneath, ask yourself this…

Is that the tree or the bark talking?