The Allegory of the Neighbors Tree

Last May our next door neighbor chopped down his enormous, over-grown, monstrous tree. I should have seen it as an omen.

You would have thought I would have been grateful!  I should have been over joyed! I should have sang hallelujiah from the rooftops!  After years of of mumbling and cursing under my breath (yes - that's right - cursing) you would think I would have been exstatic to see that thing go!  That massive tree has been there, shading our backyard since we moved into this house over 13 years ago.

But some things you just don't appreciate until they are gone.


The tree was something we never really noticed when we moved in.   But every fall we grumbled about it's plethora of leaves that made a carpet of yellow in our yard and the hours we spent raking up the multitude of leaves.

We would all hold our breath during each wind storm (and there were a lot of them) when we heard the eerie creaks coming from the weight of the branches pulling away from the trunk of that overgrown tree.

And I would shake my head in despair when those leaves would float lazily down into the cool swimming pool water.

We never realized how much we appreciated it!

Once in awhile we did strain our necks in awe to observe the ginormous branches and gargantuan expanse.  But when we had a barbecue in the backyard,

or had ward watermelon feeds, we didn't appreciate the cool shade that it provided.  We didn't pay enough attention to the wonderful parts of having that overgrown tree in our neighbor's yard. We didn't seem to notice the enticing evenings when we played games in the shaded backyard or were hidden from soccer teams practicing in the early summer Saturday mornings.

When the tree came down, suddenly we felt exposed.

The hot summer sun beat down on us without even the tiniest bit of sympathy for our fragile state of innocence.  Never mind that we had never been out in the open like this before.

It was then, and only then that we noticed if the sun was setting on any given summer evening, the sun could shine right where the tree used to be and through deck doors where it would blind any innocent kitchen-goer.

We missed our tree . . ., um . . . I mean the neighbors tree.

So the parable is . . . that some things you don't appreciate completely until they are gone. And you wish you would have realized the good parts instead of grumbling about the bad. Because there is good in every situation . . . whether we realize if or not.