Courtesy of Guideposts Magazine
As a little boy, nothing amazed me more than the fact that the mighty oaks I loved to climb started as tiny acorns. With the planting of a seed, plenty of sun and rain, and the nourishment of the earth--up grew a miracle.
I believe dreams are like oak trees. Let me tell you how the seeds of change were planted in my own life--and how they grew, gradually yet steadily, with the right nourishment.
I'll start with an August afternoon in 1983, when it felt like I'd been driving my car forever through the dusty Florida summer. To all appearances, my life was great. I had just graduated from college with degrees in American history and business management, and had a wonderful wife, Anne. Every weekday morning, I put on a suit and tie and headed off to a good job as a salesman.
Yet I yearned to do something else with my life. To wake up, pull on blue jeans, step outside, and be at work. To see sky instead of fluorescent lights, to feel the breeze instead of air-conditioning.
As I drove to my next sales appointment, something alongside the highway caught my eye. A shopping mall was under construction. Bulldozers had churned through an expanse of land, and huge sycamore trees that had once graced the field now lay wrenched from the earth, the roots clotted with sunbaked soil. A sadness came over me. I love trees, and it hurt to see them thrown aside.
One of my earliest memories from growing up in Iowa was digging in the soil at the age of 5 to plant a black walnut tree in our backyard. Several years later, my family, along with the Oehl family, who lived on our right, and the Sandersfelds, who lived on our left, gathered to plant shared maple trees on the property boundaries that separated our houses. I can still smell the damp earth and feel the cool soil as we kids dug holes and carefully lowered in the saplings. Those seemingly frail trees grew as we did. They still stand between our families' houses, majestic maples now, a testimony to longevity and friendship.
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