Your Worth Doesn't Require an Audience

When my husband and I first got married, we lived in a small 1940s house in an industrial part of Atlanta. We bought the house thinking we would renovate it, but it would end up renovating us. It was a stubborn house and had been poorly maintained. We wrestled with it for years, using our savings to fix problem after problem. There were rats and mice and plumbing issues and heating issues and cooling issues and on and on the list went. We lovingly fixed up the screened in front porch, my favorite part to this day, and got help from my husband’s parents to fix the ceilings, and patch together a kitchen rehab on a budget among other things. 

And all the while, as we wrestled with the house and fought with each other and finally accepted it was a beast that couldn’t be tamed, there was a tree.  A tree that stood on our narrow street, too large and too regal for her place in the world. The tree occupied most of the small patch of yard in front of our house. 

She was tall and proud and mostly ignored, until our frustration turned to her. There are no garages in most small city houses, and ours was no exception. We could barely fit our cars in the narrow driveway, and the tree stretched over it dropping sticky sap. It was nearly impossible to remove, and we must have ordered every cleaning product ever produced to remove it.

There were ants, too. I don’t know much about nature, but the ants seemed to be free diving from the tree into our cars. And so we started to notice the tree and we were annoyed with her. She was simply being a tree—she had sap and ants and leaves that fell and branches that snapped in the wind. We noticed her now, but only in the ways she inconvenienced us.

She was a busy tree, always producing. I just didn’t know or understand what she was doing. Through our old single-pane windows, we would hear things dropping from her limbs—cracks, pops, and bangs on the metal roofs of our cars. Drop, drop, over and over. I’d sometimes lay awake at night listening to that sound, anxious about the beating our cars were taking in the driveway. 

I had no idea what was falling out of the tree. I was too busy to notice or care. I was making a life, wrestling with a house, and soon to be having babies. And there she stood, quietly, frustratingly grand. 

She was a beautiful tree, by the way. Thick and tall and proud, With no one else around her you could see the full shape of her grandeur that had witnessed decades of people coming and going in the old house by the train yard. 

I’m embarrassed to say my ignorance and disinterest were unchanged for years. Until, as often is the case, children’s curiosity made me stop and take notice. After I had my first two children, they’d play in the yard as toddlers, and they started picking up what she’d dropped. They were small round eggs, dark brown and flecked with black spots. My toddlers were fascinated. “What are these?”, they’d ask in their tiny voices. “Can we eat them?” 

With a bit of internet research, we discovered they were pecans. Beautiful, tasty Georgia pecans. If you’re from the South, you know pecans are prized and not cheap. This beautiful tree had been dropping gifts all over our yard for years, and we had no idea. 

And so we made a pie. Now in case I’m giving you the wrong impression, I am not a domestic mastermind of any type. But I love home, cozy, and homemade. And it was my brother’s birthday, and he loves pecan pie. And so we went out into the front yard under our big beautiful tree, and with big bowls we gathered up all of the pecans we could find. We bent down over and over gathering up all her fruit into our metal kitchen bowls. The kids loved it. I loved it. It was blissful.

Our bowls full of her pecans we went inside, and I swear you could see her wink. We finally got it. We finally understood who she was. 

And we cracked open the pecans and together with my babies I made my first pecan pie from my own beautiful pecan tree, and it was delicious. We were little urban farmers. Not only was it from my yard, it tasted so fresh. And so she gave me something else too, one of the most beautiful memories I have with my big kids who were toddlers in that tiny kitchen we could barely fit into together. We made a pie with her pecans, and we loved it. 

And when we finally happily moved to a different house, I would miss her, and miss the lesson she taught me. Beauty and worth were right under my nose, or should I say towering lovingly right over my head day after day as I scurried by too preoccupied to care. 

I learned a very valuable lesson. The worth of a tree, of an object, of a person, even of God, is not contingent on whether other people notice her. I am the tree. And you are the tree.

We think that being noticed will give us worth, because we see the people in the world noticed as having worth and being celebrated. And sure sometimes that works, but let me also gently remind us all of what we already know. Person after person, who seems to have it all, they are noticed, prized, and lifted up reveal in their life or their death the truth we all know in our bones - that the crowds don’t satisfy the longing. Because worth, your worth, my worth, the tree’s worth—it’s all inherent. That tree was glorious and abundant and powerful the whole time I ignored it. It was just ME that caught up to the reality that already existed. Your worth, that reality about you also already exists. Let’s catch up to it. You are the tree my friend. Maybe someone has noticed your beauty, your fruit, maybe not. But you see that doesn’t change the truth. 

The only thing, the ONLY thing I miss about that house is the tree. I want to hug her and tell her I am sorry I never noticed her beauty, and tell her thank you for everything she taught me and for all her fruit. And I would say the same to you with a hug, I am sorry if there had been people, times, or seasons in your life when your worth and your beauty were ignored. And I would tell you thank you for standing in who you are and let’s be the tree together. Standing tall in our beauty, worth, and fruit of our work whether anyone notices or not, the truth is still the truth.