Margaret Cheasebro

When we are faced with huge challenges, life may seem overwhelming. They feel like insurmountable obstacles: moving away from home, losing a friend or loved one, selling a house and moving into a new one, being fired, adjusting to a new job, struggling through an illness. The list goes on and on.

What I've noticed about such challenges is that each one takes monumental effort on my part. I have to dig deep inside myself and find new ways to cope, or I must polish long-unused skills to survive. When it's all done, I'm exhausted.

No matter what the difficulty, once we make it through and give ourselves time to rest and recover, we wonder how we managed to survive. We remember that neighbors, friends, or even strangers lent a hand at particularly grueling moments. We used tools to help us survive the next minute, hour, or day. We might have learned to use those tools from earlier challenges. We might have discovered how to use them out of sheer necessity and the overwhelming urge to survive. No matter how those tools developed, they are in our toolbox now, and they can be refined for all kinds of other tasks. They help us to navigate life a little more easily.

I thought about that when I was walking on a pathway beside the Animas River in Berg Park. It's a beautiful area of trails, brick walkways and benches that runs through Farmington, New Mexico, the city where I live.

I came upon a cemented area protecting two large metal culverts that let water flow under a walkway and into the Animas River. Nothing grows on that cemented area – except for one very determined little cottonwood tree. It had found a crack in the cement big enough for its roots to reach nutrient-rich soil.

What courage it must have taken for that tree to find a way to flourish! There are much friendlier areas where it could have rooted. Some of those places are just a few feet away, but for some reason it chose that spot.

When I look at the picture I took of that young tree, it reminds me that I too can make it through tough times. Life eventually will get easier, more relaxed, even fun. If I make a list of all the difficulties I have faced in one column and all the good times I've experienced in another column, there are many more good times than difficulties. Thank goodness!

I joined two neighborhood friends in the front yard of one of their homes. We sat under a huge mulberry tree whose big green leaves spread over much of the front yard.

"When the leaves of the mulberry fall this autumn," the owner said, "they fall all at once. One day they're there, and the next day, they're on the ground."

Just as all of us humans are different and handle the changing seasons in our own ways, so trees have their own way of letting go of the leaves of spring and summer to step into autumn and winter. For them, it's built into their tree-ness to handle leaf shedding based on signals they get from nature.

For us, when we face change, whether it's seasonal change or a change in our life circumstances – a change in jobs, the loss of a loved one, a move from one place to another, a different way of doing something familiar – we often get our signals from our own fear or apprehension of facing something different.

Will we like the new job, can we handle the tasks, will other people on the job accept and respect us? How can we survive without the person we lost? Will we ever get over the grief, the loneliness, the sudden change of almost every detail of our life? Will the place we're moving to be a pleasant one surrounded by the activities and the kinds of people that we have come to expect? Why does someone want to do a particular task in a different way when we can see there is only one sensible way to handle it?

When we face change, we recognize the need to take one step at a time through all the aspects of adjusting to that change. There's no easy way to do it. We just have to move through it, putting one foot in front of the other with determination.

No matter how hard the change in life circumstances seem, we can look to trees for inspiration. No matter what happens to trees – a seasonal change, the beginning of life as a young sprout or the end of life as a dying tree – they find a way to support each other. The stump of a cut down tree continues to be nurtured by trees around it so that it remains alive. A young sprout finds itself in the protective shade of a larger tree. No matter what the seasonal change, trees see in other trees that the change is handled with innate wisdom.

As trees prepare to move into the changes brought about by cooler weather, how can we as family, friends, and neighbors help each other face changes that inevitably come to us at one time or another? A kind word, a visit, sharing a chore, keeping in touch with someone who has moved away, a smile – the simplest things help to make life a little easier during change.

As you notice trees changing this fall season, remember that change is easier when we let people know they're not alone. Mother Teresa once told people who wanted to contribute financially to her ministry that, instead, they should take time to let people in their own community know they are not alone. We're all in this together, the trees and us, and we handle change better when we know others are encouraging and supporting our various journeys.