Windstorm Days and Skinny-Ring Years

When I was about six, a terrible windstorm knocked over several enormous 100-foot pine trees in our large yard. As my dad cleared the debris, my sister and I counted the rings on the four-foot wide stumps. 

Some were thick, others skinny. I learned that when a tree has conditions that encourage growth, it produces a thick ring. In a "discouraging year" when conditions are less than ideal, the tree produces a skinny ring. 

Looking back at that windstorm, I’m reminded of a time where I felt a little bit like those towering pines toppled by the storm. I was pregnant with our second child and I went for a routine appointment early in my second trimester, only to be met with words no mother wants to hear: “We can’t get a heartbeat.”

In that moment, my heart shattered into a million little pieces. It was a windstorm that blindsided me. I was supposed to be past the miscarriage “danger zone” of the first trimester. 

That news leveled the landscape of a very tender, personal part of my future, just like that storm had leveled the landscape of my childhood home.

Through the devastation and tears that day I told God, “I choose to believe You are still good.”  

Psalm 46:1-3 reminds us, “God is a safe place to hide, ready to help when we need him. We stand fearless at the cliff-edge of doom, courageous in seastorm and earthquake, before the rush and roar of oceans, the tremors that shift mountains. Jacob-wrestling God fights for us, God-of-Angel-Armies protects us. (MSG)

2011 was a “skinny-ring year,” filled with constant reminders of what was supposed to happen - but didn’t. The windstorms of life can shake to our core and crack us wide open. 

But unlike the trees, windstorm days are not the end of our story. We can stand back up, and allow God and time to mend our broken hearts and souls. We can continue to move forward and hear heaven’s gentle whisper reminding us that there are more rings yet to be added to our “stump.”

What I’ve found is that God’s protection doesn’t always mean prevention. 

The windstorm days will come. 

Life will get messy. 

Our hearts might break. 

But He’ll also be that safe place to hide in the midst of utter brokenness. He’ll be waiting to draw us in and slowly, gently put the pieces of our hearts and lives back together, if we’ll let Him.

Like the tree that suffers less-than-ideal conditions, 2011 left a dwarfed, lean mark on my stump. But today I can say that my skinny-ring year is a part of my story that taught me the healing, restorative, redemptive power of God. 

We can't undo the windstorm days and skinny-ring years, but we can allow them to change us, to shape us, and position us to encounter God in ways that we wouldn't have before. 

And that, my friends, is a beautiful thing.