Each weekend I walk one of our dogs (the one who likes to walk) up the streets in our neighborhood until they dead-end into the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains. Most of the time, my eyes are focused on what’s directly ahead of me, keeping a lookout for wildlife like deer, peacocks, and bears that make their home nearby. One time, though, a birdcall distracted me, and I looked up to see a chunk of wood on one of the support wires holding up a utility pole. As I studied it, I could see that at one time, it was a tree that had grown up and around the support wire to the point that the wire was embedded in the wood. For the trunk or branch to so fully envelop the wire and grow around it, the wire had to be in the way. The tree wouldn’t choose to be pierced with the wire and grow around it. But it did because it couldn’t do anything else but grow and keep reaching for the sunlight.

We didn’t choose to be involved in a pandemic, but here we are. How will we integrate this into our experience? How will we grow in spite of it? The tree was never the same after it was forced to wrestle with the wire, but the size of the chunk left after it was cut down shows that it kept growing. So must we.