On being an apple tree

What does it even mean to be a Godly woman? (Part 4)

(After close to a month, I'm finally sitting down to write, and I'm looking forward to it so much. I obviously have a cup of tea by my side [Winterwoods Tea Company Inland Grey], along with my bestickered Steepware full of hot water so I don't have to keep running downstairs for the kettle. It rained all night so the beginning-to-change colors in the scrub oak and aspens on the mountain out my bedroom window are boldened by the wet. The temperature is peaking in the mid-50s, so I'm wearing a wool base-layer under my "Mama" hoodie. I just put a gluten-free chocolate bundt cake in the oven, and I can smell the batch of broth finishing up in the Instant Pot, ready for the first soup of the season tonight.

All in all, a pretty perfect first day of autumn, and a lovely way to celebrate making it through another summer. In a recent Instagram post, Sarah Clarkson [one of my very favorite authors, and one whose wordsmithery I can only dream of!] shared that "every year when these first cooler days and navy cold evenings creep in I feel... like I've scented native air." That's exactly what I feel too, as I always feel out of place and not myself in summer. Autumn is a homecoming and I recognize myself again.)

A couple of weeks ago, I entered an Instagram giveaway for a book entitled You Are a Tree. To enter, you had to comment and share what kind of tree you thought you were and why. As someone who loves word pictures, I thought much too hard about it and this was my answer.

“…the one that kept coming to mind for myself is an apple tree. Their beauty isn't jaw-dropping, but more understated and homely. They can be very productive, but are often taken for granted because apples aren't very exotic. They're steadfast and last through many storms (thinking of all the apple trees found on old homesteads, etc.).”

It should have been a simple online interaction. A fun comment idea to promote engagement. But as I went about the rest of my day, it niggled at me. Because, as silly as it sounds, I didn’t want to be an apple tree. Yes, that was the description I had come up with for myself, but it was based in how I felt others viewed me.

I talked about it with my sister, Erin, because I knew she wouldn’t think I was crazy. I expressed how I felt like my apple tree answer was so pathetic. Not pathetic along the lines of “oh no, people are going to think less of me”, but more that this productive and taken for granted person is how most everyone relates to me.

For basically all of my adult life, I have felt like almost everyone I know likes and appreciates me for what I can give them, not for who I am a person. Thanks to patriarchy’s poison, this also played out in my marriage for years as well. I love helping others and supporting them in whatever they’re going through, but that’s only sustainable when you’re being supported as well. And so much of the emotional aspect of support comes out in knowing that you’re valued for who you are and that you don’t have to perform a certain way or check specific boxes in order to have worth. (Yes, I’m aware that I have inestimable worth to Jesus, and I’m so thankful for that. However, I believe that God created us for relationship, and in true relationships, we value the other for who they are and how God created them.)

I’ve shared before that I’m slowly learning that I don’t need to be productive in order to have value. To be, as shown in some lines from a favorite poem, “…outside, feet bare, giving what she can give and taking what she needs.” It’s a very slow process to change this mindset, especially as it’s one that I feel like is underlined by my interactions with others. It’s hard to value something that it feels like no one else cares about.

In processing all this with my sister (she often doubles as my therapist!), she asked me what kind of tree I wanted to be. And I knew the answer right away. I wanted to be a birch tree. They’re appreciated just for being, not for doing anything. They are also somewhat wild, but that doesn’t bother anyone.

I think back to who I was in my young adult life, before I felt like I had to conform to a certain ideal of what a Godly woman supposedly was. In my early twenties, I was often the ringleader of various somewhat wild escapades amongst my friends: dancing in the pouring rain, belting out show tunes walking down a country road, rolling down a sopping-wet grassy hillside. I definitely wasn’t known as a quiet, reserved young woman.

I have a distinct memory of the last “crazy” thing that I did for a very long time. I was staying with my future in-laws, recently returned from living in New Zealand and days away from getting engaged. Aaron, my future husband, was pouring a concrete pad with his brothers and some family friends, and afterwards I instigated a mud fight with Aaron and several of his younger siblings joined in. It was fun and exhilarating, and was a delightful way to flirt with this man I was very quickly falling in love with. (Plus, after hosing each other down, I got to see Aaron with his shirt off while we sat on the sunny driveway and dried out. Bonus!) But after the euphoria wore off, I became aware of the cold disapproval on the face of every single adult and teen present (minus my enamored almost-fiancee). Initiating a mud fight (especially with the young man you were courting) was definitely not something that a young woman should do. And in that moment I realized that certain parts of my personality would have to be majorly curtailed in order to be accepted in this sub-culture I was shortly going to be marrying into.

There was a decade plus of trying to smother that birch tree part of me, all in the name of “Godliness” and outside expectations, but these last several years have seen me pushing back and trying to find that part of myself again. I cringe at that terminology as it sounds a little bit too much like a Disney movie mantra, but I no longer think that being a woman of God means that I shouldn’t have a touch of wild in me. Jael certainly wasn’t reserved when she drove a stake through the head of an enemy king.

Being emotionally healthy is such a balance, such a tension between different ideas. For myself, there’s nothing wrong with being an apple tree. Producing and giving to others is a very good thing, as is standing steadfast through hard times. But at the same time, recognizing your worth and value as a person created in the image of God and beloved of Him is also very good. So many of our ideas of what a Christian “should” look like on the outside are one hundred percent man-made, and not actually based in anything God has said. May we all learn to value others for who they are, even if that looks very different from what we think it should.

“What does it even mean to be a Godly woman?” series

Part One: I don’t know anymore

Part Two: My patriarchy story

Part Three: On finding yourself in poetry