Pruned and Cut Back...A Tree and Me

Today I am grateful for a successful 20 + mile training run yesterday, our last before our next marathon. I am also grateful for the need for blankets as the air cools.

On our run yesterday, I had been pondering some of the week's happenings and doing some of my daily prayers in my head. (Prayers make it safer in there.) I was thinking about self-hatred and how I had spent the first half of my life living in it, the second half trying to overcome it, and that I am feeling content and blessed with my progress in that respect. 

A couple minutes later we ran past this tree:

I was just thinking about halves and here's another one in front of me. Half of a tree. It's been pruned and cut back to prevent it from interfering with the power lines. Just like me. Negative thoughts and feelings pruned. Ego cut to a right size. Allowing the Great Spirit or Higher Source to power me more effectively than my own will ever did by itself.

The tree is strong, sturdy, and continues to thrive. The pruning and the cutting back were necessary. I feel the same way about myself.