Which stump are you?

I took a two hour walk to clear my head. And I didn't quite expect to find such deep lessons from what I saw on the side of the road.

Earlier this summer, I took a two hour walk to clear my head after a frustrating meeting. I had a lot to think about, a lot to process, and a lot to pray about. I wasn’t planning on it being a two hour walk, but like Forrest Gump, I started walking and then, well, I just kept walking.

As I processed everything that was going on, I began noticing something along the road: stumps. Yes, stumps. And each one seemed to be telling me something. Even something contradictory.

The stumps fit into two distinct categories: ones that were ground down, and ones that were supposedly dead, but somehow still had foliage growing from them. And since my blessing and my curse is to find lessons in obscure places, four ideas started to emerge. I want to share them with you, because maybe you’ll find them as helpful as I did.

The First Lesson: Kill It Completely

Initially, I started to see the stumps through the lens of what needs to be ground down in my life. I don’t know if you’ve ever cut down a good-sized tree in your yard, but if you do, you need to actually get something called a stump grinder. A stump grinder is a big tool, operated by a lawnmower engine, that’s a cross between a chainsaw and a wood chipper.

A stump grinder from Home Depot.

Here’s the idea: unless you grind the stump down completely, down to the roots, it will start growing back. It may take some time, but new branches will sprout. And before long, the tree you thought you had killed becomes a problem again.

Here’s a picture of one of those types of stumps:

One of the stumps I came across that hadn’t been ground down.

Ok, so maybe this one may seem obvious, but the lesson for me was that I need to completely kill the sin and other crap in my life if I don’t want it to grow back. That has been made abundantly clear to me over the last year+ as I’ve confronted my misordered/disordered drinking and found sobriety. I had root issues in my life — chief among them the desire and lust to escape — that I had to get to the root of. And through some tough things like intensive therapy and intentionally investing in my relationship with Jesus I have been able to root those out.

But it was messy. Stump grinders are messy. They work really well, but part of how they work is by obliterating the stump. Wood chips and shards get everywhere. You have to wear protective gear. And when you’re done, it literally scars the earth. Take a look at this example of where a tree once stood. Look how the stump is nowhere to be seen, and yet the ground is scarred:

The remnants of a stump that had been ground down.

Friend, I can’t think of a better analogy for my life over the last year. It’s been successful, but it’s been messy and it’s left a scar. But I’ve gotten to the root.

The Second Lesson: Resiliency

I think that first lesson is kind of the obvious one, right? But maybe one that’s not so obvious is if you look at the stumps in the complete opposite way. Let me explain.