Grafting
I HAVE BEEN FEELING UNFRUITFUL. For a long time. My marriage has gone on for over twelve years with no children, despite many repeated, varied fertility treatments with their various levels of physical and emotional trauma. The monthly ups and downs of hope and despair have just about worn me out.
My late-thirties feeling of autumn is approaching. And there are no seeds fallen in the soil around me to guarantee spring. As I walk the streets, the trees around me take on unbelievable poignancy, and I revel in their shade and beauty, admiring the food and shelter they provide for so many. My own flowers have long ago faded, and I feel like impending firewood. At least, I hope, my winter will be snowy, to cover over my sadness with a blanket of glistening white.
I feel guilty for constantly sliding into dark thoughts of longing, but I can't help wondering if I have somehow inadvertently done something to screw up my life. My husband is serving as bishop; his close relationship with the Lord is obvious and well-defined. Ward members sometimes laughingly refer to me as the “mother of the ward,” the irony of which I hide silently, masking my feelings with a wry smile. I know I am supposed to be more outgoing and helpful and caring than ever, but the self-imposed feeling of “misfit” sends me running away from the ward rather than to it. No one has cruelly meant to make me feel this way. My husband cares and tries as often as he can to be the model husband, but he is simply too busy with work and church to be of much help. I compulsively research adoption possibilities and try over and over to start the process, but something just doesn't feel right. It's not time yet. But why?
The only time I feel real peace is walking around the lake near my house in the morning. The ducks and squirrels seem to know me and don't flee at my coming. All of the life at the lake is becoming part of my extended family, and I love to sit in the fresh morning sunlight and breathe in the intoxicatingly lush air. The feeling of growth is palpable. I can even forgive the mother ducks for parading their fuzzy ducklings in front of me each spring.
I have been serving as a ward missionary for several years. As investigators come and go, my hearts beats open and is slammed shut again an excruciating cycle, and I plead with the Lord for ways to keep my heart fresh and in hope with life. Although many come and go, a few stay, and those who do nourish me deeply. Mary, an African-American woman I met through teaching new member lessons, has become one of my best friends, as has Lingling, a Chinese woman I had taught in our ward's free English class. The three of us have bonded somehow and are starting to feel like sisters in the true sense of the word. I suppose our difference in race must seem interesting from the outside, but in our small “family,” we hardly notice it.
Knowing of my longing for children, Mary and Lingling both asked me to become a “godmother” to their sons, Paul (age fourteen) and Shawn (age twelve). Both sisters want me to help raise the boys in the Gospel and to be on hand if anything should ever happen to leave them orphaned. I am overwhelmed and delighted with the responsibility, and Paul and Shawn are now a part of our extended family. All the sweetest activities we do—holidays, summer trips, festivals—are the ones we do together.
Nevertheless, my morning walks at the lake are taking on an increasingly earnest intensity as I plead with the Lord to bless me with a baby. The prayer has almost become a mantra. I want to feel life growing inside me. I want to feel connected. I am so raw from the constant longing that I can scarcely pray about it anymore without bursting into tears, so I save those moments for the lake. The ducks and squirrels don't seem to mind my senseless outpourings of desperation.
One morning, the random thought comes: “How do you graft trees?” The question burns into my mind out of nowhere. I had read the olive tree parable in Jacob Chapter 5 several times, but other than that, I don't even think I had even uttered the word “graft” before. I grew up in the suburbs and never thought much about agricultural issues like tree grafting. Yet all of a sudden, finding out the specifics of how trees are grafted takes on such urgency that I have to get home immediately to search the Internet for farming tips.
The first thing I learn is the purpose of grafting—to increase the potential for bearing good fruit. The reason why grafting is important is because it can combine the good characteristics of different trees, such as strong branches, disease resistance, or especially flavorful fruit. It not only accelerates fruit-bearing, but can also enhance and lengthen the lives of trees, sometimes almost indefinitely. And grafting can also repair injured trees and create new, sweeter kinds of fruit than have ever before been possible. Good fruit is what I long for, Lord. Teach me to bear good fruit. Please.
Reading on, I find that the process can be traumatic for the trees involved. Branches of the rootstock tree have to be cut way back, and good fruit-bearing branches of other trees have to be severed from where they began. When the farmer joins the rootstock and scion (the fruit-bearing part) together, there's a special trick to getting the graft to join. Underneath the bark of a tree is a thin layer called the “vascular cambium,” the thin layer just a few cells thick where cell division happens and the nourishment flows up and down the tree. In grafting, it doesn't matter if the bark matches, or if the rings align. All that matters is that the vascular cambium of the two parts matches up, so that nourishment can flow, and cells can start dividing together to foster growth of both parts equally. Wow, I think. Equally. It's not just about one side or the other, but about both.
As I sit in front of my computer searching through agricultural websites for tidbits of information, the spiritual meaning of grafting washes over me. I am rootstock, I realize. My task is to deepen my roots and to prune out everything but the “main branches” in my life—to get rid of those leafy parts that were never meant to bear fruit. And I need to find my own vascular cambium, that vital layer of myself below the surface where true growth is going on. Where is it? I wonder. Where am I growing?
I am not only rootstock, though. I am also scion being grafted to the Lord's tree of life. If that is so, I realize, I may need to let go of where I once thought my roots went down. My mother and father have been expecting me to bear “our” kind of fruit, and they may be surprised to find the result looking remarkably different than what we all had in mind. I once thought I was an apple tree, meant to grow apples, but I am now producing oranges and almonds. Mary is from Florida, and Lingling is from China—their roots stretch far into distant soils. But now they, and I, and their sons are becoming one living, growing thing. Our bark may look different, our inner rings may reach back into different histories, but our growth layers are receiving nourishment together. We are developing, providing shade, bearing fruit. We are family.
My pain begins to make sense now. The Lord has an entire orchard in his plans. It's not all just about me. There are trees in other parts of His wide vineyard that have what I need, and that need what I have. For new nourishment to flow into us all, we may be clipped and carried, pruned and prepared, allowing ourselves to be lovingly handled by the Master Gardener. Through missionary work, through adoption, and through the sheer and inexorable force of love itself, we are being brought together into something stronger and deeper and more fruitful than any of us had imagined before. If we are injured, we may be healed. If we are dormant, we may be brought back to new life. Our only job is to focus on the growth layer—the place where we are developing—and prepare to merge with another, stronger life force. A force which, after all, has been the Lord's all along. A force which can't flow without our being scraped raw at times and infused with life from beyond.
On a recent trip to White Sands, New Mexico, I watched the boys play in the sand, taking turns pushing each other down the smooth, sandy slopes in a plastic dish. “Grampa, check this out!” they yelled to my father at the bottom of the hill. He watched and smiled. The beautiful tones of the boys' very different skin were luminous in the light of the setting sun. Could the Lord have known all along how I would cherish this exquisite pleasure?
What I once thought of as something called “me” is beautifully growing into something called “we.” And it is growing all the time.
Brecken lives in Greenbelt, Maryland with her bishop and two lovely cats. She is currently working as a TV producer for the Mandarin Chinese Service of the Voice of America, the United States' international broadcast network, while slogging wearily up the never-ending mountain of a PhD in communication. She is adamantly opposed to becoming a writer unless she can write emails for a living.
