Familiar Trees

I see him up ahead of me.

Jeans and flannel shirt, work boots high-stepping through the briars. Blue cap on gray hair, sweat rings circling the bill, worn flimsy and threadbare by the weight of time.

Papaw.

We’re walking through the woods.

“Remember these trees,” he says, pointing at an ancient oak, gnarled and wizened. Then he looks back at me and smiles. “They’ll lead us home.”

Twenty years later, I sit in an Adirondack chair and stare into those same woods, into the verdant foliage beyond the treehouse we built together. Several lifetimes have passed. Years. Decades. Life. Death.

And yet, the trees remain.

Papaw’s words remind me of how C.S. Lewis once equated grief to getting lost in the forest. He said it’s like getting turned around, walking in mindless circles, passing the same stretch of woods time and again until everything blurs together, an inescapable mass of nature.

He’s describing chaos. And grief is certainly chaotic.

He’s also describing insanity.

Remember these trees.

I wish I could recall his voice, hear the words exactly as he said them. I can’t. Not quite. But I remember how he smiled as he imparted that timeless wisdom, as he moved mountains that didn’t yet exist.

Lewis was right—grief is a lot like getting lost in the wilderness. Chaos. Insanity. Panic.

But Papaw was right, too.

As I was doing research for my new book, I stumbled upon something interesting. At first I thought it was coincidence, a statistical aberration. But it held true with almost every single person I interviewed.

I call it “The Triumvirate Theory:” when tragedy strikes, on average and nearly without fail, we have 3 people we can completely trust; people we can fully rely on; people that are with us through the whole ordeal—the chaos, the insanity, and the panic. 3 people that pray. 3 people that listen.

3 people that stay. No matter what.

Oaks.

As I sit in this Adirondack and ponder how best to guide you this week, how to weave my words in order to inspire and encourage, I find myself distracted. I keep looking into the woods. Daydreaming. My mind traveling back across space and time, to a world I can’t recreate.

It frustrates me at first. But then I realize I’ve been staring at the answer all along—it was never my words you needed to hear.

Consider your triumvirate this week, your ancient oaks. Identify them. Thank them. And then, simply follow the man in the blue cap.

He knew the answer long before I asked the question:

Remember these trees. They’ll lead us home.

A fellow journeyer,

Bryan

For updates on my next book, The Lazarus Within, and for a chance to join the book’s launch team, simply fill out the form below. As always, thank you so much for your support! This page could never hold my gratitude.