In today's episode, Tamara shares 4 lessons we can learn from from trees, wind, and the storms life throws at us.
Welcome to another episode of Tamara's takeaways in the Stories of Hope in Hard Times podcast. This week we are going to talk about my takeaways from PeggySue Wells episode last week. And she is just unbelievable and amazing. And I am so inspired by her strength and courage as she weathered her divorce with faith and came out stronger and better and able to pass on so many incredible lessons.
So there was one lesson that I loved in particular that I'd love to talk about and tell you a personal story as well, and that is the fact that God is at work--even in this.
No matter where you are in your life, whether it's being quarantined because of the coronavirus, cancer, diabetes, or other challenges, know God is at work. He can take that challenge and have it turn out for your good.
Now, I want to take you back in time, probably about 25 years or so. And at that point, I was preparing to be a missionary for my church. On one particular day I was just hanging out, and all of a sudden this huge storm hit and began blowing like crazy. Of course, we ran inside and took cover. Ten minutes later the storm was completely over, and I went back outside. There I was shocked to see the extent of the damage.
And what had happened was there was a weather phenomenon called a derecho, which in Spanish means "straight." Basically, it's a storm that has straight line winds. This storm happened to go through Utah and the Great Basin here of the United States. And these winds were so strong, that about a mile away from where I was, they clocked the highest wind at 121 miles per hour. So you can imagine there was extensive damage.
What I noticed the most were the trees. Before the storm there were trees that looked beautiful and vibrant and totally fine. After the storm, those same beautiful trees were laying flat on their side with their roots tipped up.
And what's interesting about this is that the trees that was stood the storm were the trees that had sunk their roots deep into the earth. The ones that had fallen over had shallow roots. In fact, I'm looking at a picture right here of me standing by a tree and it had shallow roots, because it it just hadn't been exposed to strong winds.
And what's really cool is there was a study done by a bunch of scientists on trees that were exposed to wind versus trees that were not exposed to wind. And the little tiny saplings which were exposed to wind did a couple of things to the trees.
So exposing a tree to wind helped it have stronger roots, stronger branches.
Every situation you face in life can be interpreted as wind or a storm. And we can either look at the wind as something that's trying to uproot us. Or we can look at the wind as something that is trying to give us thicker roots and thicker branches so that when the next storm comes, we are stronger and our roots are more deep.
And I love that is what Peggy Sue is able to now look back on her divorce and say, This gave me stronger roots. This gave me stronger branches. God was at work even in this.
Maybe during this season of the coronavirus you're totally stressed out because you've been home. We all have situations in our life where the...
