The Reading Tree (Passion Sunday)
We dedicated the Reading Tree with joy.
There were plans —
laughter already imagined beneath its branches,
books stacked in anticipation,
afternoons mapped out in our minds.
It was meant to be the center of the garden,
the place where stories would unfold as my grandsons grew.
And then it didn’t.
The work stopped.
The dream stalled.
The garden remained unfinished.
For years, the tree stood there —
planted, but unused.
What was meant to be a gathering place became a reminder of something incomplete.
There was sadness in that.
Not anger.
Just the quiet disappointment that comes
when expectation and reality part ways.
And yet, the tree stayed.
When the garden finally returned to us —
not as it was first imagined,
but as something new —
the Reading Tree came alive in a way I hadn’t foreseen.
The boys grew.
The stories were read.
The laughter came,
just later than expected.
Somewhere in those in-between years,
I found myself writing a legacy for my grandchildren
that would become
The Reading Tree.
What hadn’t yet unfolded in the garden began unfolding on the page.
The story came before the shade did. Perhaps it had to.
Sometimes I think about Passion Sunday when I sit beneath it now.
The joy.
The waving branches.
The certainty that everything is finally happening the way it should.
And then the turning.
Expectation isn’t wrong —
it’s human.
But fulfillment doesn’t always arrive in the shape we planned.
Sometimes it comes later. Sometimes it comes deeper.
This garden was not meant to be the first version.
It was meant to be this one.
And this tree, once barren,
now holds our stories –
His Story.
Perhaps that is enough…