Prune or Be Pruned

An old forgotten apple tree grows along a trail I often frequent with my canine pals. I don't know if some long-dead homesteader purposely planted it there, or if it's merely the lucky offspring of a discarded apple core. Every fall I peruse it for fruit, but in the past four or five years, I've only managed to pick two small, sour specimens; the few apples it produces each year are either wormy or out of reach. That tree is a mess. It's scraggly branches are mostly dead and dying, and the few live ones seem to have forgotten how to carry out the process of fruition. This tree seems to be shrinking rather than growing, as it sacrifices a dead limb or two each year, with no new growth to replace what has been lost. This old apple tree is in dire need of a gardener's care, or more specifically, it cries out to be PRUNED.

 Pruning is weird. It seems so ruthless and painful, yet it yields great abundance and LIFE. Dead and dying branches, sucker shoots, and excess blossoms sap a tree of the necessary energy to produce flowers and decent fruit. Wildness and unhampered freedom haven't blessed this apple tree. It has suffered in it's exposure to the elements, wild animals, insect infestations, and probably destructive humans, year after year, leaving it in a weakened and essentially barren state. Just like that tree, my life needs some hands-on care from the Creator... including painful but necessary pruning.

 Just this past week, I experienced some pruning. Specifically, I was pruned of my computer :) I thought it was a huge tragedy (especially since the crashed hard drive took with it thousands of unbacked up (irreplaceable) pictures that I feared I would either lose forever or have to shell out hundreds of dollars to extract, all blamable on my backup neglect). As the week of loss wore on, I gradually came to appreciate the stillness, the lack of social network frenzy and tyranny of catching up on missed tv episodes. I spent more time reading, more time talking to my husband, and more time free of the need to keep in touch with, reply to, check in with: PEOPLE. I didn't miss my computer at all. I enjoyed the extra space and cyber quiet. And now that my pictures have been rescued (THANK-YOU Merciful Father!), I don't want to go back to the cyber-addict I was before. I want to chill out and live a bit more naturally. While I will NEVER prefer phone conversations over texting and email, I don't want to feel the compusion to read my whole newsfeed every day, "like" my friend's pictures and statuses, or to constantly check if someone is "liking" my stuff. It doesn't matter.

What matters is to breathe, to savor, to LIVE the one life I have been given to live. Not hooked up to my machine. Not living in the Matrix of cyber-space. I want to disconnect and go outside; see the glory of God and experience what HE has for my life...