The People Pleaser's Guide to Loving Others without Losing Yourself by Dr. Mike Bechtle

Author:Dr. Mike Bechtle
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Self-Help;Self-esteem—Religious aspects—Christianity;Identity (Psychology)—Religious aspects—Christianity;Love—Religious aspects—Christianity;SEL023000;SEL031000;REL012070
ISBN: 9781493428922
Publisher: Baker Publishing Group
Published: 2020-12-07T00:00:00+00:00

One Final Reason

When I was a kid, our annual family vacation was usually at Sequoia National Park in central California. We would rent a “housekeeping cabin” where we’d cook on a woodstove, then put the leftover food scraps in metal trash cans on the canvas-covered porch.

Shortly after dusk each night, we would watch through the windows as black bears would rummage through those trash cans, only three feet from us. (No, they don’t let you intentionally attract bears anymore.)

During the day, we would visit the general store, take day hikes out to Crescent Meadow, and climb Morro Rock. We would hold peanuts on our laps and watch the chipmunks climb up our legs to grab them, and we’d watch blue jays fight for the ones that dropped (the peanuts, not the chipmunks).

My favorite adventure was the nature walks led by the park rangers. Every day we would go on a different excursion where these experts described the intricate details of our surroundings. One day it would be about trees. The next it would be about animals. Then we would learn about the conditions on the forest floor that enabled seeds to grow.

Even at a young age, I was fascinated. I remember how I felt when a ranger said, “We’re surrounded by the largest and oldest living things in the world, the giant Sequoia Redwoods.” She told us that when the first European explorers stepped onto the shore of the New World, these trees had already been alive for over a thousand years.

General Sherman was the granddaddy of them all. By volume, it’s the biggest tree in the world. Other trees are taller, but General Sherman is the beefiest. Weighing about two million pounds, it’s been around for about 2,200 years (which means it was already two hundred years old when Christ was born). Our whole group would circle the tree and touch fingertips, but we never had enough people to reach around its trunk.

“What do you think keeps this tree from falling over?” the ranger asked. I had paid attention in science class and remembered what my teacher told me. “The taproot,” I said. “Trees have one huge root going straight down that holds it in place.” I was proud of my chance to show how smart I was.

“Good guess,” she said, “but these giant Sequoias don’t have taproots.”

Now I was confused. I thought taproots were the only thing that kept trees from falling over during storms, earthquakes, and other natural events. Now this ranger was telling us that the largest trees in the world were missing their taproots. So, what held them up?

“These trees have surface roots that extend sideways for a huge distance—often covering a whole acre of ground from a single tree,” she said. “But that’s still not enough to hold them up. These trees grow in groves, close to other trees. Their roots reach out and intertwine with the roots of every other tree. That’s where the strength comes from. In simple terms, the trees hold each other up during the worst conditions.

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