A Tale of Three Trees, Lesson 1

When we lived in Shell, Ecuador, we lived in town just a few blocks away from the town park. Great location except for the bar across the street. We had a fairly nice little concrete home. We had hot water in the shower (not at the bathroom sinks, though). We had a large, comfortable kitchen for an Ecuadorian home. We had a bodega (building) out back that housed the washer and dryer and storage (and rats). We didn't have much of a yard, but grass is overrated in the jungle when it's full of bugs and the ground is always sopping wet anyway. Oh, I miss that house! Sometimes.

We also had three citrus fruit trees in our front yard. Lemons the size of grapefruit (they were green, never yellow). Limes. Oranges that never really ripened right with so little sun.

When we first moved into that house I was thrilled. Boy howdy I was gonna make me some fresh lemonade every ding-dong day!

I think I made lemonade maybe once.

Those trees became the bane of my existence. You see, anyone who passed by our house would notice that abundant fruit bowing the branches. And, to them, that was good stuff. It was not meant to hang there on a tree, it was meant to be enjoyed...and if it was meant to be enjoyed and the citrus fruit tree owners were not currently outside gorging themselves on such abundant, albeit tart, fruit, then any ole passersby had just as much right as anybody to a lemon or twelve.

Large iron fence be hanged.

I know that the previous missionaries that lived in that house had pretty much done the work of training the neighborhood that climbing the fence into the trees without permission was not okay. That doesn't mean it didn't happen - boy, did it happen - but usually it was when we weren't home. Or were out of sight around the block, anyway.

Now, right here I could go off on a rabbit trail about how my cool father-in-law gave our neighborhood kids the fright of their lives when he came right back around the block in our roaring Bronco to catch them in the act. Oh! There were kids and lemons and branches flying everywhere! But I won't. I won't allow myself to be sidetracked. Thanks, Ben.

Anyway, when I was home, people did have the decency to knock on my gate and call me away from whatever task I was busying myself with with an URGENT request for limones. On my good days, I graciously picked one or two for each of the kids or adults standing at my gate. Then I spent the rest of my day, doling out lemons to the entire community. Then I'd have one of my bad days...and I'd throw lemons at the heads of anybody who dared come near.

Okay, that last part isn't true but it was my fantasy. Usually, I'd just tell them to come back later. Or NO! Or I wouldn't answer the door at all and I'd watch them climb my fence and then yell at them out the window, scaring them off of their precarious perch! **cue evil laugh**

What those citrus trees taught me was that a)I will never own a citrus tree again in my life and b)I'm not so good with people who think they are entitled to my lemons - ahem - kindness and c)giving very seldom feels like you want it to. It became very difficult to think nice things about people when I was constantly being interrupted and demanded for more lemons. Personal property there wasn't set up the way we Americans do it. Sharing was a save-face kind of thing. You always share when asked. No. Matter. What.

Oh, the looks I got when I said no! It was two worlds clashing and I felt like the one who was bruised and battered after every encounter. How would you feel if your neighbors stopped by when they noticed your garden was doing well and asked for some tomatoes or green beans everyday? I saw that as a severe breech of neighborly ettiquite, they saw my unwillingness to leave my work to pick them a lemon as downright selfishness. They left without lemons. I was left with monumental guilt.

In the end, what did we do? We opened up our gate, we let the entire gaggle of neighborhood kids into our yard, we gave them sacks and they crawled all over our trees picking them clean. One day we even got a runaway pet monkey in our house as a bonus! By the time we moved out of that house, things were working a little better. We gave in a little, they got to feel special for picking the gringos trees clean and everybody got lemonade.

Okay, I didn't get lemondade. But I did get a few weeks of peace and the neighbors still thought I was okay. Maybe our Christian testimony wasn't completely ruined?

It's all in how you approach it, I guess. When life gives you lemons you can either make gallons of lemonade for yourself, give the lemons away to the often ungrateful kids in the streets, or let the lemons rot on the tree and use them for fetch with your dog.

Giving isn't often fun. Sure, it's fun when it's our idea and we can arrange it so that it isn't a nuisance or uncomfortable. But God often arranges opportunities for us to give when it kinda hurts. And we don't even get a thank you.

I'm grateful today for those rotten citrus trees. I was ready to hack them down! They were a constant source of frustration to me, at least until I yielded to what God was trying to teach me. And the lessons I learned from those trees are innumerable. I'm still processing it actually.

So there was lesson one. Giving hurts sometimes - it isn't fun, you don't get the thanks you deserve, but that's no excuse not to do it.

Our house in Shell. This was right after Sean "pruned" the trees. Big mistake. They started producing more than ever! And, why yes, that is our dog, Maya, wearing a t-shirt in the front. As if the gringos weren't weird enough. That's a whole other story that will have to wait.

Brooklyn posing in the lemon tree. Isn't she cute? She's probably about 3.5 or 4 here. Oh, I miss that little baby with her precious ringlets! Sometimes, I just want to crawl into these older pictures of my kids and cuddle with my babies for a while. Why must they grow and change so?

Sean picking...lemons! For the record, he hated them too. He'd sometimes go on a tangent and pick all the trees clean and throw all the lemons in the street in bags. They'd be gone in seconds. Then we'd have a kid at our gate asking for lemons. At least that's how it was until we got a clue and let them in to do the work themselves!