As I’ve grown older, my life seasons have changed. As the seasons have changed, so have the things that occupy my time.
When I was a parent of young children, most of my time was spent watching over and teaching them. As they grew up and moved out of the house, they didn’t need me in the same way. If I had continued to treat them as toddlers it would not have been productive, or in Bible-speak it would not have been fruitful. That part of my life needed to be pruned, but it had been a happy time, and I knew I would miss it.
Similarly, I have served for years in a specific ministry only to be later called into a different direction. God’s calling into a change was clear. Holding onto a particular area that had previously received his blessing was no longer good. It took time to change course, ending one ministry well and then starting the next. The previous part of my life needed to be pruned, but I worried what would happen to the former ministry after I was gone.
It is difficult to make these changes but not difficult to explain my reluctance. Either I am happy with the status quo, or I don’t trust God to take care of the things I leave behind. Regardless of which it is, I resisted change.
Sometimes the Bible’s references to pruning confused my feelings further. John chapter 15 evokes images of casting pruned branches into an eternal fire, while Mark 11 tells about Jesus cursing an entire tree to wither and die because its branches weren’t fruitful. These responses seemed severe for my challenges in changing my parenting style or handing off a ministry.
Recently, I learned about a different example of pruning – more of a symbol of a proactive and constant effort to stay aligned with God’s will for my life – voluntarily letting go of one thing to embrace something better.
The olive tree provides a beautiful illustration of this type of pruning. Olive trees are one of the longest living trees in the world. Some have been alive since Christ walked the earth. They live and bear fruit for centuries or even millenia. However the individual branches are not productive for that long. Eventually, each olive branch stops producing fruit and that branch needs to be removed so that the tree can thrive.
However when the branch is pruned, it isn’t abandoned or cast into a fire. God’s blessing on that branch continues, even after it is removed from the tree.
Most people don’t know that olivewood rarely comes from cutting down a tree. The trees are far too valuable for that purpose. Olivewood is harvested during the pruning season from cut branches that no longer produce fruit. They are gathered and slowly but carefully converted into one of the most beautiful, expensive, and prized types of wood in the world.
Photo by Davies Designs Studio on Unsplash
Olivewood has beautifully figured grain and is incredibly dense and hard. The finest wooden kitchen utensils are produced from olivewood. A few exquisite pieces of furniture justify the expense. Some of the finest carvings in the world started from a pruned branch.
In 1st Kings chapter 6, we learn that when King Solomon built the temple, he placed inside the holy of holies a pair of winged cherubim who stood vigil over the ark of the covenant. He chose to carve them from – you guessed it – olivewood.
Removing a non-fruitbearing branch isn’t punishment for a tree, or an admission of disappointment in its performance. Instead, it is part of a natural cycle that allows the tree to thrive while the branch releases a special beauty that it otherwise could not. If this were not true, would God have allowed a fruitless branch to become a guardian angel in his home?
Pruned branches will never be a substitute for a fruitful life. However if they are carefully removed at the right time and turned back over to God, then he can do wonderful things with them. They can still be a blessing. They become visible evidence of God’s invisible qualities and continue to point us back to Him.
Thriving trees produce pruned branches. It is all part of a life of Shalom spent releasing and expanding as we rest in the Father’s arms.
If you are interested in seeing products that I make from olivewood, please click on the link below to look at the Shalom Door Post Signs. They are made from olivewood grown in the Holy Land that ships to me directly from Bethlehem, Israel. The word Shalom is laser engraved in Hebrew characters on one side as a declaration of peace over your home, while the other side includes a scriptural blessing.
Maybe it will also remind you that God can do something magnificent when you release a portion of your life to him.
When I was a kid, you could buy 40-sheet spiral notebooks on sale for a ridiculous price, like 10 for $1. We always had a stack lying around the house, mostly intended for school use.
I was never a fan. The spiral rings got bent, preventing the pages from turning smoothly. If you tore out a page, there was a strand of perforated leftovers trapped inside the ring. For each page, you had to extract it and walk to the trash can to throw it away. If you waited for several sheets before removing each strand, they got all smashed up in there and ripped into tiny pieces when you tried to carefully remove them.
Even the detached page had all these weird jagged fingers where it had been torn. They seemed to mock my preference for the smooth crisp edges of loose-leaf notebook paper.
They were not for me – except during the summertime.
Free of the shackles of school, my days were my own to roam about. One of my pastimes was to crank the handle of our Boston pencil sharpener as it cut a perfect point on my wooden pencil before opening the cover of one of our spiral notebooks.
It was time to draw, and all I needed was a subject.
Neither my brother, Preston, nor the family dog, Tippy, were good models. They had too many complicated parts and never sat still. Sometimes I tried to draw the furniture in one of our rooms, but that required lots of straight lines and I was never very good at those. My lines were wiggly and curved at the end.
Thus began the process of wandering aimlessly about the house in search of inspiration. I would look at something, then look down at my tablet and imagine what it would look like on the empty page. Nah. Unsatisfied, I carried my hunt to the next possibility. There never seemed to be anything fun to draw.
After minutes of excruciating search, I would lose interest in drawing and move onto something different. Throughout all of my summer vacations I am not sure I ever touched the pencil to the paper more than a handful of times.
I’m not much of a artist.
During the past eighteen months, I’ve written maybe half a dozen blogs. That is infrequent compared to the almost weekly basis before that.
Recently, I’ve had an urge to get back in there and work at it. On several different days I picked up my laptop and sat in my most comfortable chair, ready to write something.
It was time to write and the only thing left was finding a subject. My mind would drift through the things going on in my life. Most of my ideas didn’t seem to be quite right. Occasionally I would just pick something and dive in, but after a few paragraphs I would pause to read my progress. It had as much life as a glass of Coke that had been left on the counter overnight. I deleted everything and went back to my home screen.
Eventually, my laptop began to stare blankly back at me in exactly the same way my spiral notebook had done decades ago. Just like before, I put it down and went to find something more fun to do.
Usually that “something more fun” was in the garage.
I’ve been approaching my writing much the same as I did drawing. If I couldn’t find a just-add-water subject, then I haven’t taken the time in quiet contemplation to figure out why. After all, I’ve been busy.
In the time since my writing paused, I have built countless items for people. I have zero regrets. No matter how difficult any project has been, it remains my firm belief that God was using it as part of a greater plan.
Convinced that it has been my calling, I have thrown myself completely into it. No amount of effort, organization, money, imagination, or pain could keep me away.
After losing the last joint of my index finger in a table saw accident, I literally began working one-handed as soon as I could stop taking prescription pain meds (less than a week). At night, I have dreamt about intricacies of whatever I was working on. I have set up web sites, bank accounts, a fully-stocked woodshop, an in-house store, and so many other things in a brief time that most people would find it difficult to believe.
I have spent almost two years living out Colossians 3:23, and I have loved it.
“Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord“
But if I was working with all my heart, how come my heart keeps getting called back to writing? Why do I keep returning to my laptop and staring at an empty screen? Can’t I be fulfilled by a divine calling? How come I have to have more?
I think the answer lies in the Gospel of Luke, chapter 5. Jesus’ ministry was just taking off. He had recruited his own team, found his voice as a teacher, and begun a healing ministry that had the entire countryside abuzz. Crowds of people were coming to him and then following him from place to place. He was watching the Kingdom of God come to a chosen people.
He must have been excited beyond words. At night, maybe he dreamt about his next message or about the next person he would heal. I bet he jumped out of his bed each morning ready to continue his ministry.
However, the verse 16 seems like a contradiction to his energy and momentum. After 30 years, things were finally starting to pop. So what did he do?
But Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed.
Luke almost sounds surprised by the response. The word “but” implies that Luke thought withdrawing to lonely places was a contradiction to his ministry, like it was slowing him down.
My guess is that Luke expected to write something more like. “Jesus often got up thirty minutes early to read scriptures and pray.”
Do you know how long Jesus must have been absent for Luke to say that he withdrew to a lonely place? In the next chapter he tells us about one example when Jesus was gone all night.
I believe that I know what Jesus prayed about all night. After all, Hebrews 4:15 says that he was “tempted in every way, just as we are.” If he was facing the same difficulties as we do, then we can probably guess what was on his mind. What would trouble you as your ministry took off?
He was challenging himself, ensuring that humility and love triumphed over pride and preference. He discussed with the Father where he should go and what he should talk to the crowds about. He studied his own heart to see if any cracks were developing between him and God. And he listened.
Jesus probably wrote some of his most famous parables in those lonely places. He poured over and over the words, making sure they captured eternal truth without including unnecessary additions. You can imagine him trying to work out the details of the different kinds of seed (Matthew 13). If he struggled with the same things as us, then he must have struggled to get each parable perfect.
At some point, he had to practice saying the parable out loud to ensure he wouldn’t leave parts out, but also validating that the truth rang out.
Those are the same things I do when writing my blogs. They are my prayer of sorts that I share with the world.
Even though I spend time in scripture and prayer each day, my heart has missed the hours at a time I spend writing. My short prayers every day occasionally fall short of their potential. They aren’t wrong, but they are incomplete. God had a lot more for us to work through than could be done before the end of my cup of coffee.
Caught up in my ministry of actvity, I had begun to slot God into a few, prime timeslots instead of occasionally offering him my whole day. The tugging at my heart to start writing has been his way of saying that we need more time together.
It is hard to surrender my time to God, since he won’t tell me how much he wants first. When I do, it is frustrating to spend an hour pouring out what is on my mind only to hear him whisper that it needs more work.
Each time I write something down, it is like turning to God to say “Did I get it right this time?” and he frequently says “Nope. Not yet. Keep trying.”
In the case of this blog, it took three times before he smiled and I could feel his peace.
Lately, I haven’t been withdrawing to lonely places very often. My head said that I was doing the Lord’s work. My heart has been suggesting something different. It is time to start listening to my heart again and spend more time Making Waves.
It is hard to find balance in it all. It is easy to run to one side and spend all my time “working with all my heart”. It is also easy to run all the way to the other side and move into a lonely place with him where I can’t fulfill my divine purpose.
Perhaps the answer will come one day at a time rather than following a formula.
The urge will unexpectedly stir to sit down in a quiet place and process what He is trying to put on my heart. I need to drop everything when that happens. At other times, someone will reach out and ask for help building something special. Then it is time to go to work.
This blog has given me joy as I enjoyed the hours away from the fray, listening and contemplating.
It seemed that a global conspiracy had been put into place, keeping Kim and I from taking our first international vacation. We had canceled our plans for three years in a row – first for a pandemic, then a military invasion, followed by slow tourism reopenings. We had originally planned a trip to Ireland, but the events of the past three years convinced us to head slightly further north to Scotland.
Our interest in exploring our roots was increased after assembling the story of my grandfather, James McAfee. Understanding more about his life brought clarity to events that shaped my father and me. I became aware of seemingly small things from our past that guided our worldview. Armed with that knowledge, we journeyed into our family’s distant past to see who else we could meet.
The McAfees are part of an ancient clan, tracing its roots back to Alpin, the first king of Scotland in the 9th century A.D. We were a small clan never exceeding 400 people, but present through events that shaped Scotland across the centuries.
The MacFies (the official spelling) battled for freedom with William Wallace in 1297 A.D. at the Battle of Stirling, again with Robert the Bruce when he defeated the English in 1324 A.D. at the Battle of Bannockburn, and in 1745 A.D. when the Scots tragically lost the bloody Battle of Culloden, signalling an end to much of clan life.
For years I have heard the stories of my proud forefathers defending themselves, risking everything to defend their way of life. However I was not prepared for the impact it would have on me walking the lonely roads of the small, rural island where our story began.
Colonsay is a stunningly beautiful island off the western coast of Scotland. I stood in amazement on the shores of Kiloran Bay, with the sounds of crashing waves drowning out all thoughts except for the magnificence of our Creator’s hand.
The 20-acre gardens at Colonsay House feature soft paths through ancient trees and brilliant flowers that seem to transend time itself.
You can clearly imagine watching people as they erected the Standing Stones thousands of years ago. Our views of hills and valleys are the same as the first eyes saw some 8,000 years ago.
James and I searched for hours for A’ Clach Thogalaich, the lifting stone. It weights 280 lbs and has offered generations of young men the chance to prove they are coming of age by lifting it off the ground. Lacking any good place to grip and awkwardly off-balance, it is deceptively difficult. No matter how I strained and pulled, it remained stubbornly stuck to the earth. Conversely, after a few adjustments and a brief struggle, James successfully lifted it and took his place in a long line of victorious warriors.
The MacFie population on the island peaked at 387 in 1881 A.D. but is currently just over one hundred people. Although that equates to 128 acres per person, neighbors there know each other. The joy people share together is demonstrated by its designation as the smallest island in the world with both a functioning brewery and distillery.
I was unprepared for the feeling of heartbreak after we walked a gravel path to MacFie Stone, the site of one of the darkest days in our family’s history. In that place Malcolm MacFie, the last clan chief, was murdered in 1623 A.D. – executed as he stood against the large standing stone. A mournful spirit hovers in that place, where for a moment humanity failed.
As much as we felt at home there, Kim and I agreed that few people would consider it an ideal vacation spot. Winter days are cold, dark and rainy. Summer days are cool and rainy. There are few modern conveniences and the ferry that provides transport has a schedule that is irregular and can be unpredictable.
Nonetheless my heart had an unexpected connection to that distant place. I am a MacFie, born out of the Highlands of Scotland. My life is part of a chain that extends across millenia.
Compared to the enduring beauty of Colonsay, my life seems very short.
In ways, it feels that my part of the story is very small. I am not only the 10th generation in the United States, but something like a 50th generation MacFie. Another 300 generations have passed since the first residents lived on “our” island. All but a handful of those have faded from memory, their names erased by the sands of time. One after another they rose up and took their place guiding the world before passing the torch on. Am I more than another life soon forgotten?
Is our time on this earth as fleeting and insignificant as Solomon wrote in Ecclesiastes? He bemoaned the pointlessness of it all, the repetition of the earth despite our efforts. Even with all his wealth and wisdom, his temple is gone, his kingdom broken, his enormous wealth dispersed. Was it all “chasing the wind?”
If he struggled to find meaning in it all, how can we?
This week, I was introduced to Malcolm MacFie. He has been dead for 400 years, but his memory lives on and his story offers encouragement.
Most of us studied English Imperialism in high school. Since the U.S. threw off the shackles in the 1700s, it offers us little more than a footnote in history. However, Scotland fought for their recognition as an independent country for centuries (and had a popular vote concerning withdrawal from the United Kingdom as recently as 2014).
Malcolm became a clan chief during the reign of King James 1. In order to increase his control over the country, King James dissolved the Lordship of the Isles, the body that governed the islands around Colonsay. The MacDonald clan had previously controlled that governing body and formed a rebellion, led by James MacDonald who recruited Malcolm and several clan members. The rebellion was not successful and James MacDonald was imprisoned in Edinburgh castle.
James subsequently escaped and fled back to the islands, where Malcolm assisted him in some capacity. Malcolm was arrested for his role then tried and released when he agreed to offer his support in a specific campaign. However while he was gone, a group of mercenaries moved onto Colonsay.
These mercenaries feuded with Malcolm upon his return, who managed to avoid entangling the clan in a war by hiding whenever an attack came. While he must have been tempted to simply move away for a time, the law of that day required a clan chief to oversee the people or else they would forfeit their lands.
Eventually the mercenaries captured Malcolm and carried him to a hilltop on Colonsay where they tied him to a standing stone and executed him. The clan forfeited their lands and were required to disperse, many leaving the island they had known as home for 800 years. The MacFies became a “broken clan” until the 1980s when they were officially re-established.
Was Malcolm a failure? Is he even relevant today?
Malcolm may have died and his clan may have been disbanded, but the MacFies did not fade away, nor did the freedom he sought perish. Forced from Colonsay, we continued to pursue Malcolm’s values.
James McAfee emigrated to America in 1739 and helped to establish history’s largest democracy.
Robert Andrew MacFie was born in 1811 and became a successful businessman in Ediburgh before using his wealth to get elected to English Parliament to reform the very institution Malcolm had fought against.
Malcolm may have lost control as a clan chief, but his pursuit of freedom opened the door for exponential growth. MacFies, McAfees, McPhees, and others with variant spellings are now beyond counting.
Perhaps our value in this world doesn’t lie in our accomplishments or failures. The work of our hands may crumble and decay while our seeming failures yield enduring results. More importantly, the light that we shine continues to persevere.
I believe that in time I will pass from this earth and my name will be forgotten. However every day that I am alive I will seek justice, show mercy, and walk humbly. God can use my faith to build a better tomorrow. He can allow my unwavering hope to influence future generations.
It doesn’t matter to me that the lifting stone remained stubbornly still when I strained against it. My victory is that the next James McAfee lifted it. My legacy will be that others believe bigger things are possible through Christ.
Was Malcolm’s life a success? Was he responsible for the collapse of a clan, or the emergence of something bigger? The answer lies in your hope for the future.
My grandfather. James McAfee, was a pilot in World War II and died in the sky over Berlin, Germany in 1945. Although he was survived by two sons who each had their own kids, none of us knew him. His early death snatched away our chance to spend time with him in this world, and we can only look forward to him welcoming us into the next.
I compiled the letters he wrote home to his mom during his brief time in the military in the pair of books Your Loving Son, James – Vol 1 and 2. Those letters coupled with insight into the missions he flew introduced me to a young man full of life with a bright future ahead of him. However, I have already done my best to tell his story so won’t repeat the effort here.
Those letters exposed me to more than a grandfather I never knew. They are an open window into the past that allows a forgotten breeze to blow into our lives, carrying the sights and sounds of a time long since gone. That unexpected treat encouraged me to pull up a chair and watch out that window as other people walked by, unaware they were being watched.
His mother and father regularly strolled past my window, just like his youngest brothers. I watched his flight crew bond as they prepared themselves for battle. These people and more were featured and it was fun to meet them, since most of them died before we met.
My great surprise though was to meet a dark-haired teenager from a small farmtown in those fading pages. The words painted her in rich colors that surpassed the brief stories I had heard about her before. She was still very young but was facing hardships beyond her years.
In order to survive difficult ordeals, most people would develop a hard shell that can repel the severe conditions. This protective shell usually grows thicker as the years pass until cynicism slowly sets in. Gradually expecting less and less from others, isolation is preferable to the pain of disappointment. Alone or in a crowd, they keep a safe space from others.
However, it didn’t seem to work that way with her. In the midst of chaos, she embraced hope. Despite her circumstances she remained positive. As I read page after page of her story, it became apparent that she had a secret that was responsible for her strength. That secret influenced her decisions which in turn created the person we would come to know.
That secret explained how this teenager born into a troubled world would defy the odds to become a sweet, white-haired grandmother who would charm and influence generations.
By that time, we all called her Granny.
Back in 1943, Granny started the year as Ruby Keehn. She was seventeen years old and dating a charming, but older, boy. James McAfee had enlisted in the Army and left their small town in Indiana. He completed basic training and was probably just starting his next phase of training when she found out she was pregnant.
I can only imagine her struggling with whether she should tell her parents or try to hide her condition. She must have been scared of what others would think and worried about how she would support a child. However, she took a chance and told James, hoping for the best.
To her relief, he received the news well. They excitedly made plans to be married and she dreamed of the future they would build together. He would be a strong provider, she would be the doting wife, and this baby would be the first but definitely not the last. In her mind, she could already see them together. Unfortunately, a world at war was keeping them apart.
Love finds a way and she bought a ticket to Mississippi to be with James. She had never traveled that far before but her dreams awaited her on the other end and she began her trek. Upon her arrival, reality set in.
She could not stay on the military base and James was not allowed off-base during the days he was on-duty. She had to rent a room at a family’s house and wait longingly for the brief visits from James when he was off-duty. The room was expensive, but they were determined to find the $25 rent somehow. They began to make wedding plans.
When James told his mother about their pending nuptials, she did not respond as he had hoped. Mother had taken issue with someone in Ruby’s family and did not think she was an ideal choice. What a heartbreaking blow! She had no idea how to improve his mother’s opinion of her since it wasn’t based on anything she had ever done. It was a small consolation when James told her to trust him, that he would smooth things over. Would they really become the family she dreamed about?
Acceptance may have been on her mind, but money was a more urgent problem. Ruby went about looking for a job to pay rent and all of the other necessities of life. She excitedly applied at the first places, telling them how everybody back home knew that she was a hard worker and could work almost all day without taking a break.
One after another, rejections piled up. No matter how qualified she believed that she was, no one would give her a chance. All they saw was an out-of-town girl who had gotten into trouble with one of the countless G.I.s who streamed through town. He would be gone in a few weeks and she would also.
She didn’t quit trying though. She was determined to visit every business in town. She fought to believe in herself and to prove herself worthy even while others viewed her as something less.
Their wedding was nice but not exactly what she had envisioned. It was a rushed event since James wasn’t eligible for a leave. At least James’s mother traveled in for the ceremony and seemed to soften towards her. Ruby was encouraged as her new mother-in-law boarded the bus to return to Indiana.
Maybe they would patch things up after all. She decided that she would keep writing letters to her whether or not she ever responded. Even if it meant risking rejection, she would go first. She would lead with her heart exposed.
Soon enough, she was alone again in her small room. James had a $4 dentist bill and no way to pay it. It made her angry that things were so expensive and while he was risking everything for his country that he couldn’t get basic health care. Moreover, the government frequently didn’t pay him on time. He could go for weeks at a time without a paycheck. If something didn’t happen, they wouldn’t be able to make the next rent and she would have to retreat to her parents’ home that she had so proudly left behind.
On June 8, 1943 she grabbed a piece of paper and a pen and began to write a letter to James’s family. She couldn’t afford her own postage but James could always mail letters for free. She would tuck her pages in with his and hopefully the McAfees would share her letter with her mom and dad, even if they didn’t consider her to be family yet.
She laid across her bed and began writing.
She tried to be strong and scribbled some niceties about the weather and the nice family she lived with. The reality was that she wanted someone to hug her and make everything OK. Ocassionally she stared at the blank page and blotted away her tears, being careful not to let one hit the paper. She wanted to encourage them that their son was OK, not worry them with a tear-stained letter.
When you read carefully you can see the chinks in her armor. Even when focusing on asking about how the corn was coming in, her worries about money crept in. When she talked about her chance to make dinner for James this weekend, all she could afford was dried beans & onion with some potatoes. She wanted to do more for him.
It hurt me to read her words, knowing how hard she was trying but that her fortunes would not soon change. It was a small comfort that God withheld from her any clear view of her future. In less than two years she would be a nineteen-year-old widow with a second son on the way.
Amazingly though, this teenager continued to bend without breaking under the pressure. Somehow she persevered through the pain and never gave up hope. Even if she had known the sorrows that awaited her, I suspect she would have continued to stand strong. Buried in that decades-old letter was her secret that still speaks to us.
Ruby foused more on the people in her life than the circumstances that surrounded her. Even as dark clouds gathered, her face would light up when she talked about James’s youngest brother. She still had the same look decades later when she talked with me about her mom and dad, who lived into my teen years and beyond.
Despite her desire to prove herself to people, she understood that it was more important how she cared for them. Whether they held her in the highest regard or not, she loved them anyway. That simple trait would become a foundation that she built her life around.
On that day she shared her secret with us. Closing a letter that hinted at so many troubles, she told us how she coped with everything. She shared wisdom beyond her young age. When it all gets crazy and you seem to have lost control, focus on what you care most about. She closed her letter with the secret of her strength.
Her love for her kids and grandchildren was never dependent on how we responded to her. If I didn’t visit her when I was in town, she sent me cookies anyway. If I didn’t make room for her on my calendar, she faithfully mailed me a birthday card every year. She did the same for lots of people.
Across the years, her decision to focus on loving people shaped her. It softened her heart and defined her world view.
Sometimes life goes better than we deserve and sometimes it serves up more trouble that we could imagine. Those things come and go. When it all fades away, love remains.
My new goal is to live like she did. Through all the trials of life, my hope isn’t to conquer them and prove that I am more powerful. Instead, I hope to prove to others that they are important to me. Rather than rise above my circumstances, may the love that I share transform the people and world around me.
One day, I hope my legacy is the same as hers. May I raise up people who fearlessly love others.
Thank you, Granny for telling us the secret of your strength. Even more, thank you for making it our inheritance.
New Year’s Day found me standing in the garage, looking over a huge mess. It was the remains of a busy holiday season spent building gifts for anyone who asked. In the mad dash to deliver every order, housekeeping had clearly taken a low priority.
There wasn’t room for a pathway from one end of my shop to the other. Tools were strewn across any surface with an empty space. A film of sawdust covered everything. Dozens of pieces of wood lay scattered about.
The time had come to begin this McAfee family’s tradition of cleaning up, throwing out, and getting ready for the new year.
Opening the garage door let in fresh air and daylight, so I grabbed Kim’s lawn blower and blew as much of the dust outside as possible. Then one at a time, I picked up each tool and coiled its cord before putting it into its proper place. That left the pieces of leftover lumber. I separated the larger pieces of wood by species and threw them into their cubby holes.
Then I turned my attention to the thin strips, short end cuts, and damaged pieces that were too small for any productive use. I managed to overflow four 5-gallon buckets.
When I hoisted the first bucket to dump it into the trash, I stopped suddenly. Instead of throwing them out, I spread them across my work table. Anyone else would have seen a mess, but these were my memories.
There was a scrap of dark brown walnut left from a table that I built for my niece, Gabrielle. It was part of a group of gifts for my nieces that I had hoped to use as a bridge of sorts between our families. Connecting across generations is harder than I thought it would be.
The pile included the last, small remnants of light-colored, hard maple from my dad’s workbench. It was as old as me, and I remembered him working over it when I was a child. My first, clumsy efforts at woodworking started there too. Although the bench is now gone, I used the best pieces to make my son, James, a personalized cutting board and also made smaller items for my daughter, Erin, and niece, Michal.
Rough-sawn strips lay in the middle of the pile. On a recent trip to the lumber mill, I had stumbled across a trove of pecan wood. It reminded me of my mom’s soft, Southern style and how much I have missed her. I bought a huge board and carried it home with no idea what to do with it. It became part of the hulking, 25-pound, Thor’s hammer in my brother, Preston’s garage gym. Ironically terrible with words, this gift was my way of telling him “I’m proud of you. Yep. You’re worthy.”
Short blocks of rose-tinted cherry were left from coasters that I have sent into every possible home. The engraved messages vary, but they are share the message that God loves you. They are part of my ministry to shine His light into the world.
Remnants of exotic purpleheart were in the mix. They were offcuts from a 30-year-anniversary gift for Kim. Purple is a favorite color of hers, so I had bought it to make my first Romeo and Juliet serving boards. It is hard to find a means to communicate how thankful you are to someone.
Bits of red oak were vestiges of a dining table we had bought at a furniture store in rural Tennessee when the kids were toddlers. They grew up around that table. When our home rennovation required a larger table, I had converted the top into our coffee table. The small leftovers reminded me of meals and craft projects from the old days.
Other oak scraps were left from a shadow box I built to honor my grandfather, who was killed in WW2. Reading the letters he wrote home and surveying his war records introduced me to a man I wish I could have met. His tragic story opened my eyes to events that formed my family and raised my compassion toward traits of my loved ones that I never understood before.
Flame-colored pieces of padauk were also there. I got a wild idea to make a cutting board with a checkerboard design reminiscent of the University of Tennessee’s end zone for my sister-in-law, Pam. Although she was a few years ahead of Kim and I, we were all on our own there for the first time. Our worldviews expanded in those campus classrooms and dormitories. Wow. We were just kids back then.
Last, there were white-colored leftovers from an ash board. Preston asked me to make him a deadlift jack for his gym. I chose ash because it gave the look of a Louisville Slugger baseball bat. Kelly, Preston, and I grew up on ball fields in Nashville, watching dad play church softball and ultimately years of our own Little League. In ways, we are still tethered together to that long ago place and time.
With a sigh, I realized that I couldn’t throw these away. There were too many memories. But scraps piled into buckets had no place in my new year.
I had seen videos of people building cutting boards in a “chaos style”. They used random pieces to create a cluttered, chaotic pattern. Kim offered to help me put one together.
For the next weeks, I converted the scraps. It was painfully slow to cut the small pieces from seven different wood species into common sizes and glue them together. Fourteen separate glue-ups and a half-gallon of glue later, all of the parts were in place.
After the assembly, it took four hours to flatten and smooth everything to a glass-like finish. Although, it was beautiful when the construction was complete, nothing is quite as rewarding as the beauty that emerges when the protectant oil is applied.
This is unlike most projects that I build where symmetry, consistency, and order define craftsmanship. It is magnificent because of the pandemonium. Its appeal arises from its distinctiveness.
Woodworkers call this a Chaos Board. I call it my Self-Portrait.
My life is made up of a seemingly infinite number of brief memories, circumstances, and people I care about. They all fit together to form an arrangement that is unique to me.
Only I can recognize many of the strange pieces that make up my portrait. When I stare too closely, some of the parts look crooked, off-size, or blemished. Sometimes I worry that people can’t see past my countless irregularities, eccentricities and conflicting attributes to find out who I really am.
Like this board, I can seem like a mess. All of us do.
But if we stop focusing on the tiny details and pull back to see the whole picture, a beauty begins to materialize. It’s not accident or happenstance, it reflects the magnificent intention with which God designed us.
Even before I started construction, this board was intended for my sister, Kelly. She has been with me as each memory was born and each piece was formed.
Like me, Kelly’s life can be a disarrayed tempest of commotion that can seem like a mess if you stare too closely. But that’s not how I see her. Her pieces fit together exactly as they were planned. I see a beauty God envisioned before the world was born.
If you look at yourself or others and see things that aren’t quite right, maybe you are overlooking the artistry. What can appear as flaws are actually a composition that was fearfully and wonderfully made.
Have faith in the Creator and seek out the beauty that He created. You are more than a chaos board.
Whenever my younger brother, Preston, gets a picture texted to him from a friend or family member, he instinctively zooms in to full magnification and looks around for strange things hidden in the background. Sometimes he finds really funny stuff.
In the same way, I like to take my favorite memories of people and “zoom in” on the unique parts of our past. Celebrating the items and moments that only we know about is my way of celebrating people.
That is what carries me back to a particular memory from my childhood…
Preston and I spent our wonder years in Nashville’s northern suburbs. Madison was a typical mid-sized, Southern town with a heavy blue-collar influence. It was a great place to grow up.
Summers were different in those days. Vacations from school had fewer organized events than they do today. We spent most of our day unsupervised, playing outside in the yard until 3:30 when it got really hot and we retreated inside to watch black-and-white reruns of the Six Million Dollar Man and Gilligan’s Island until dinner, which came early at our house.
Like most of the homes on our street, our lot was a rambling acre and a half. Since none of the neighbors had fences, the space seemed even bigger, especially in the eyes of a child. Our empire was divided into three territories. The first was the front yard, which was the most visible from the street, but was too hilly for most things and generally sat empty.
The second was the area beside and immediately behind the house where we spent most of our time. It offered the best flat spots in our hilly yard and was close enough to the house to run in and out, grabbing whatever caught our attention. The garage was nearby and offered relief when the sun was too hot. The garden hose provided a cool drink when we needed it.
The third area included everything from the small creek to the edge of the great woods. We didn’t play back there much. It was full of those large piles of grass that burp out of the mower when everything is overgrown. It was basically a pasture area without smooth footing. Most of the time, it sat quietly empty.
That secluded territory was ruled by the Hedge Apple Tree. It was the reason for the tall grass and the absence of inflatable balls, bare feet, or traditional entertainment. The Tree determined how things were done in its quiet corner of the kingdom.
Depending on where you grow up, the tree has different names – Hedge Apple, Bodark, Osage Orange, or Horse Apple. They all refer to the same tree which is most recognized for the weird, green fruit it produces. Most of us have seen the “apples” laying on the ground somewhere. As small as a golf ball or larger than a softball, they have a bumpy texture that resembles a human brain with a sticky pitch inside that is hard to wash off your hands.
The part of the yard we referred to as “across the creek” was frequently used as a bowling alley. From a young age, Preston and I would attempt to roll the sticky green “apples” from their resting place under the Tree into the creek about a hundred feet away. As small children, it seemed an impossible achievement, but we dreamt of a day when we would be strong enough to bounce one clear across the creek.
Every summer we could roll them a little further than the previous year, and we measured our progress much like a parent would mark a kid’s height on a door jamb.
The Hedge Apple Tree demanded a special lawnmower for its part of the yard. The inflatable tires on the riding mower were no match for its thorns. Dad firmly told us never to use the big mower back there, but he must have suspected that we did when he found all of its tires were flat.
Dragging the small lawnmower with the hard plastic tires all the way “across the creek” took thirty extra minutes that seemed like hours. Although our lives had no other demands on our time, we avoided the drudgery and hurriedly used the wrong mower hoping for the best.
Occasionally, we would have to trim the Tree’s drooping branches. They hung low to the ground and the sharp thorns would snare anything that brushed by. As we dragged the cut branches back to the rubbish pile, we would wince each time our carelessness allowed a thorn to tear across our hands, arms or legs, reminding us to respect the Tree and its rule over an untamed province.
One day, Dad decided that the time had come to cut down the Hedge Apple Tree. I don’t know why but maybe he will explain in the Comments below. After he dropped it, we drug off the branches leaving the exposed stump. One uneventful day, Preston and I pretended we were lumberjacks, retrieving the small, C-shaped tree saw from the garage and setting to work shortening the stump by a few inches.
The saw was just big enough for each of us to grab one end so we took turns pushing and pulling while sawdust flew out of the crack. However, the famously hard wood quickly tired us and the sawdust stream slowed to a trickle. Before long, our arms gave out completely. After multiple attempts, we gave up and moved on to other amusement. Even in death, the Hedge Apple Tree was defiant. “One day” we thought ” we will be strong enough to cut that stump.”
When the Tree was gone, it seemed like a good riddance. No more thorns, no sticky apples. No reasonable person would plant a hedge apple tree in their yard. As yards gradually converted from pastures into park-like lawns, the lowly hedge apple tree was forced to surrender its place to the new order.
It was years after the Tree was cut down that I learned the proud heritage of the Osage Orange – named after the Osage Indians and adopted by them and the Cherokees to fashion bows from the tough wood. Even the word Bodark is derived from the French “bois d’arc” meaning “wood of the bow”.
Later, the early settlers planted them between their crops and cattle as a “hedge” since the draping, thorny branches kept their animals from crossing over and eating crops that would be needed to survive the early, harsh winters. As the “apples” fell, horses would occasionally swallow them whole which earned their Horse Apple name.
In simpler times, hedge apple trees proudly held a position of importance.
However, guns gradually replaced the bow-and-arrow, and barbed wire was invented in 1873. The Industrial Revolution diminished the relevance of the trees and they became the randomly scattered, scruffy trees we recognize today.
With the fall of each hedge apple tree, the world became a more controlled and cultured place. My lawn’s garden beds may now be colorful and balanced, but part of me longs for the unruly conditions “across the creek”. These may be safer times, but I miss the days of kids running wild for hours exploring the world that God gave us and testing the limits of their imaginations.
The change for Preston and I was inevitable. Every summer we grew a little bit taller and explored further beyond our familial borders. We gradually abandoned the Lost Boys of Neverland in favor of building the lives we had been dreaming about.
For Preston’s birthday this year, I wanted to build something reminiscent of good times we have shared. That is when I remembered the old Hedge Apple Tree. It represents an untroubled time in our lives when the two of us were inseparable. As its reign ended, our lives sometimes moved in different directions. However, we have stayed close through it all. Decades later, we are able to see life through a special lens that only we share.
There will always be a part of us that is still standing together on a lazy, hot summer day “across the creek” bowling apples and laughing at the erratic, bouncing paths they take or cheering when they occasionally explode into pieces. Then and now, we are content to share seemingly insignificant moments that serve as stepping stones into our future days.
Excited by the chance to build something that heralded back to yesteryear, I decided to build a cutting board from the same type of wood we have remembered so often. It took days to find a lumber mill crazy enough to convert the rock-hard hedge apple logs into dimensioned boards, but I finally found one. After days of work, I’m going to need a new saw blade and more sandpaper, but all of the sweat and persistence paid off.
The board is surprisingly heavy for its size and features a grain pattern that is different than any I’ve ever seen before. The tung oil finish should provide lasting protection to its one-of-a-kind beauty. One side features a giant-size version of the “Mc” logo that Preston designed for me and that represents our family on everything I build. I’m pleased with the result.
Hopefully it will serve you well, Preston, for years to come. If it ever needs to be sanded down and re-surfaced, then just let me know. You will have to sharpen your own knives though, because I expect it will hold up defiantly through any use that you put it through.
