The Shape of Survival

We often believe that what endures...

should remain unchanged.

But life has never worked that way.

Trees know this.

They do not argue with the wind.

They bend.

They lose branches.

They grow toward light they never expected to need.

Yet they remain rooted.

Nothing that survives remains exactly as it was.

Perhaps that isn't failure.

Perhaps it's the cost of becoming.

Loss changes us.

Love changes us.

Disappointment changes us.

Some seasons leave marks that never disappear.

The miracle isn't that we carry them.

It's that we continue to grow around them.

Not back to who we were...

but into someone we could not have become otherwise.

Maybe resilience isn't found in resisting change.

Maybe it's found in refusing to let change have the final word.

The tree never tries to become what it once was.

It simply keeps reaching...

toward the light.