The tree outside my window.

I have watched this tree for months now. It is the only view I have from my window at work. I look to it often when I am bored or lonely. I have seen it in its fullness of summer and now the dead of its winter. I understand the cycle, I get the biological process. Every spring this tree brings forth new leaves, and they begin to grow seeking their nurishment from the sun and the rain. They are beautiful but it isn't the green I notice. The green is everyday. I see the green everyday and it becomes the norm. Then this tree outside my window started to change. It wasn't obvious at first, but slowly over months time it began to glow with oranges and reds. It became something to take note of. I loved this beauty, but at the same time I was anxious. I knew this would lead to the death of the leaves. I have seen this happen before. I know what is coming. It only lasts but a short time and then they are gone. They fall to the ground and the tree is bare. This morning as I sat at my desk I began to wonder what from this cycle could I learn about God. I began immediately to note my life feels like this often... just when my leaves are at their fullest and I am content they begin to turn and change. I often lament this change because I know what is coming. But it is also at this time that I am most beautiful, when the glow of dying to myself is praised, that is something to take note of. I also began to wonder if a passer by not knowing about trees, one who didn't understand their cycle, only saw this tree bare. Having heard once that trees grow leaves, they wait. I thought about them waiting and waiting for something to change, something to bloom, to grow. I thought about them giving up and thinking well this must just be the way trees behave, or at least this tree. I think about them walking away and not getting to witness what I have from my window. The joy of new growth, the beauty in death, and the cycle of it beginning again. I began to see that I am often that passer by to my own life. I sit impatiently waiting for something to grow and change, and give up when nothing happens. I walk away just before something green grows. Perhaps, I might stick around to see the growth but cry and beg and plead for my leaves not to change. Why must this happen? Am I ever going to grow again? If only I understood the process. If only I could see from a window the whole thing happen. It happens in a cycle, we learn, we grow, and then we are in the dead of winter and our leaves fall off. Something must die, it isn't the time for growth. And then every Spring it happens again. and again. and again. When will I learn that God is good and won't leave me in the dead of winter or the fulness of spring? I can't always learn and gain, I must also give and sacrifice. If this tree could talk and tell me it was depressed because it just lost all of its leaves again. I would be in shock. Seriously? Didn't you know this was going to happen? It happens every year, but they come back, don't you know that? Your leaves come back. I believe God told me this morning through this tree that my leaves will come back. It will be spring again, soon enough. But for now its winter and I must live in the winter and then the spring will come.