Discovering Hope After Dreams are Cut Down

We are now eight months post-tornado, and with all the leaves gone and the winter colorlessness of the landscape taking over, it feels like the loss is happening all over again.

It’s starting to sink in that even after this tree mess is finally completely cleaned up, nothing will seem quite the way it used to be. Or should be. Our park-like yard where we launched fireworks into the sky and our daughter into marriage, where we hosted church gatherings and roasted countless marshmallows, where we threw frisbees and birthday parties, is ruined—or at least forever changed for my lifetime.

After all these months, I still catch myself standing stunned, looking out the kitchen window, thinking about calling my parents. But then realizing I can’t. I tend to forget. With their passing, my husband and I have found ourselves the oldest generation on either side of our family. Like standing at the leading end of a sawed-off family line, it’s a daunting place to be. In so many ways we often feel like kids ourselves, and when there is danger or difficulty, we still wonder when the grown-ups are going to arrive.

With finicky insurance and coarse-character loggers, I experienced that feeling all over again. 

WHEN STUMPS REMAIN

Our humungous backyard trees had been so solid, such survivors all these decades. Even taking root must have been a challenge. When we plant a tree in our yard, we don’t use a shovel. We use a pick-axe. Our soil is at least 50% fist-sized stones. You can’t poke a horseshoe stake or a bird feeder pole into the ground, even after a rain, without some serious excavation. For a seedling to become firmly established and then survive in the questionable loam was a small miracle in itself.

So I wanted to believe that if they had stood for over a century, those majestic trees would last forever, or surely outlive me. Same with my mother and my dad. Though I’m certain my parents saw this generational passage coming, somehow I just didn’t. I’d never known life without them.

Following the funerals, sorting through my parents’ home and business was excruciating. So much left undone. As in any major loss, often the clean-up is harder than the initial shock. Now, even worse than the loss of my trees, the aftermath has left behind unsightly stumps. The cost to grind or hire a forklift to remove the dozens of five-ton root balls is prohibitive. 

The stumps in any life can seem costly—sawed off dreams and legacies, cutdown marriages and families, shortened lives and careers. More than a reminder of the thing that is missing, these stumps tease of memories from a better past, and plans of how life was “supposed” to be going forward. 

More than a reminder of the thing that is missing, stumps tease of memories from a better past, and plans of how life was “supposed” to be going forward. 

lori ann wood

Like planting a tree or cherishing a parent we expect to always be there to provide shade and shelter and splendor, we never anticipate dealing with a stump.

DISCOVERING UNLIKELY SHELTER

Just last week, in the middle of all the emptiness, something surprised me, and sparked hope. A huge decaying tree stump I’d never noticed before was sheltering a thriving seedling within it. It must have been there for years, hidden behind the now-fallen trees. It dawned on me, If I had been the one calling the shots in my yard years ago, that sheltering stump would not be there. Almost certainly, I’d have hired someone to grind it.

I had actually learned this in high school biology: Old growth forests support healthier seedlings. Seedlings that germinate in stumps of their deceased ancestors have a better chance of survival. The stumps not only provide essential nutrients, but also retain moisture where shallow seedling roots can access it. 

It started to make sense why all of this reminds me of my parents. Younger trees can glean life from the remains of fallen ones. Just like the tender new tree, I am surviving chronic illness, an empty nest, and life without them because of the protection and sustenance my dad and my mom provided for me, even in their passing. 

From my journal:

Last checkup at Cleveland says my heart function is still at 20%. With all the heart failure ups and downs (mostly downs) I’ve had over the last four years, I’m wondering how all this would have affected my parents, and part of me is grateful that they didn’t have to experience the uncertainty. But I sure miss their comforting calls. Mom would mostly listen and maybe offer a recipe, and Dad would pass along a corny medical joke he’d found online. Still, somehow, I have felt closer to them in this struggle, even though they’re gone. They both suffered so well, and I learned so much from both of them.

GOD’S SPECIALTY

Unlike the connotation we give them, in God’s forest, stumps point to new chances, new starts.

God specializes in stump stories. He loves to take a dead-end saga and turn it into never-ending life.

A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse; from his roots a Branch will bear fruit.

Isaiah 11:1, NIV

Out of “the stump of Jesse,” God brought forth the Savior of the world. Jesus would be born from the hacked down family tree of Bathsheba. From an ugly history and withered past, out of a family line with heartache and mistakes and shame, this stump would bear the greatest Fruit of all time. 

He has taken many through the plotline of the stump story. When all seems ruined and lost and dead, God breathes new life into it:  Abraham and Sarah, Joseph, the woman at the well, Zacchaeus, Lazarus, Paul. 

In every chapter of God’s story, without the disappointing stump, the miracle would somehow be incomplete.

LIFE AFTER THE STORM

No one plants a tree hoping to someday have a great stump to show for it. Stumps represent defeat and death and dreams that didn’t work out. My tendency is to grind stumps down so I never have to remember that the plan was foiled. And no one else can see that I failed. Detours in life, derailed plans, and dashed dreams can sometimes try to define us. 

The truth is, stumps represent life lessons, not life sentences. Our good God never wastes suffering. He never allows suffering to return empty, or the sufferer to remain unchanged. He never leaves the stump without the possibility of life inside it.

“See, I have refined you, though not as silver; I have tested you in the furnace of affliction.”

Isaiah 48:10, NIV

What we’ve been through refines us, but it doesn’t have to define us.

The key to surviving any disappointment with faith intact is this: While I am not defined by what happens in my life, neither is He. Jesus came to overcome dead-ends in human lives. To show us that past stumps, as in His own lineage, would not keep Him or His followers from His purpose.

The key to surviving any disappointment with faith intact is this: While I am not defined by what happens in my life, neither is He.

lori ann wood

Like the remains of that protective oak sheltering the new tree, sometimes what feels like the darkness of the stump might turn out to be the shadow of His wings. 

DIFFERENT THAN WE PLANNED 

Many times in life, I’ve made plans and blamed God when they didn’t work out my way. And then despised the stump that stood as the reminder.

Turns out, that tiny tree inside the large stump in my yard was a fir tree. Very different from the oak remains it grew within. I smiled at the irony, the ugliness of my ravished yard displaying the most beautiful reality: Adversity uniquely prepares us for something new. And sometimes that something is very different from our original vision of how the story should unfold.

Like a King born in a barn. Or a Perfect Son sacrificed for sinners.

We serve an all-powerful God who brings new life from painful endings. He mends broken family lines and binds up disappointed hearts. He plants tiny fir trees inside dying oak stumps.

We serve an all-powerful God who brings new life from painful endings.

lori ann wood

We all experience cutdown plans as we travel through this life: trees fall, marriages fail, health falters, children fly. But also, children become responsible adults, challenges are conquered, and new seedlings take root. 

I’ve always associated storms with certain seasons and stumps with certain choices. But I’m learning storms and the stumps they leave behind happen any time of year, in any life. So as we look ahead to the rest of 2025, we can all anticipate new stumps in our lives. But we can also appreciate the value of old ones. 

God’s perfect Storyline has always involved a little faith, some suffering, lots of prayer, and a few stumps. He handles the new growth from there. My constant challenge is to fully rely on the One in charge of everything new, whatever that will be. 

And to daily control the urge to call in the stump grinder.

(A version of this article first appeared in The Joyful Life Magazine.)

Listen to this post read by the author HERE.