A Giving God

The Giving Tree

I hadn’t even reached my tenth birthday when I first read The Giving Tree.  One of the priests talked about it in a homily at the Church of the Good Shepherd in Holbrook, NY and I thought it was something I would like to read.  It was magical for me when I was a child.  The simple words.  The simple pictures.  The simple story of unconditional love.  So easy to grasp as a babe.  The idea of turning the other cheek and remaining in a spirit of love no matter what.
And I still have the beat up copy that I bought way back when with babysitting money.  Thirty some odd years later, the little book is a cherished volume in the collection of my six year old son.  But for a number of years, it rested in the bottom of a cardboard box.  And it narrowly escaped a trip to the Salvation Army or the dump a number of times--I think by the grace of God Himself.
In case there are a couple of people in the world who have not read this wonderful story, I will give a tiny summary, because that is all that is necessary.   A little boy loves a tree and plays in its shade and swings from its branches.  The tree is happy.  The boy grows and spends less time with the tree as he pursues life’s other interests: love, money, travel.  Each time he visit’s the tree, he takes more from it.  And the tree happily obliges.  And when the boy is at last an old man, he returns to the stump he left.  A place to sit and rest is all he needs now.  And, happily, the tree welcomes him to do so.
I spent a good portion of my twenties in a relationship with a man who was an alcoholic.  It was more than five years of pain and turmoil and extreme co-dependency.  It took many Al-Anon meetings for me to recognize that giving is not always a good thing.  And I realized that love is not made of one-way generosity.  So there were days that I could have burned that green book with the greedy little boy on the cover, selfishly holding his hands out for more and never giving anything back.  And The Giving Tree became for me a symbol of the dysfunction that is codependency.  That is: giving to someone who never gives back.  And eventually there is nothing left of you.  You’re nothing but a stump.  It’s all about them.  Like that horrible little boy and the beautiful tree that he hacked and mangled.
In the morning a few days ago, the book occupied my thoughts.  I had not read it in some time, but I felt a need to hold it and read through its pages again.  It has been many years since I have secretly emptied bottles of Jim Beam down the sink.  My life has grown far away from the agony of alcoholism.  And this is by the grace of God, too.  Just like the green book, my life sat in the bottom of a cardboard box for a number of years, narrowly escaping the trash heap.
My lifelong relationship with Shel Silverstein’s book has come full circle, and I love it once again.  I realized this two days ago as I stood in the next room peeking at my husband reading it to our son.  No longer a display of dysfunction, it is the crystal clear story of unconditional love.  But not human love, not sick human codependent love.  But instead the everlasting love of our everlasting God.  We walk away and seek human love, money, worldly things.  And after all of this taking and walking away, we need only go back and ask, and our needs are met.  And we are cherished as the boy was cherished by the tree.  I have come to know that we are all that selfish boy.  But the story is not called the Selfish Boy.  It is called The Giving Tree.  And this simple fact reminds me that it is not about our selfishness.  None of that matters.  The real story is of the amazing gifts from the tree, notwithstanding the actions of the boy.  And notwithstanding the places we have fallen short in our own lives, the amazing gifts from a God who patiently waits for us to come back to Him.

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