Trees of Life
Wow! I feel like I’ve really accomplished something today. I finished three trees of life that have been trippin’ my trigger for weeks!
Crafts and I have a love/hate relationship. When all is going well, I am having a great time. When things don’t work out as planned, I get a little testy. Not aggravated enough to use my plumbing language, but pretty close!
I have talked about my trees of life before that I enjoy making for friends and relatives. I can’t remember how many I’ve made. I wish I had taken pictures of all of them. I use basically the same technique, but each one turns out to be unique. There is a trick to it however, and I struggle with it every time. If I use wire that is easily twisted around the beads, many times, the trees will not remain standing. If I use a heavier wire, it’s harder to twist into the proper shape.
Recently, I worked first on a tree for my oldest granddaughter, Lyric. Like I said, the wire I use to make it easy to twist the beads into branches is too thin to make a sturdy tree trunk. By the time I got the first attempt done and kept trying to get it to stay straight, it was a shrub of life, not a tree of life. So I tore it apart.
The second time, I put on some thin glass beads. Though they looked very fragile, they were strong enough to cut several of the finished branches in two. So, I snipped all the beads from the wire again and removed those beads from the strands.
The third time, I had too many slightly larger beads on the tree, and for the life of me, I couldn’t keep it from toppling over. And no matter how much glue I put in the oversized hole I had drilled, the tree would not stay put. So I repeated the disassembling process and put aside the heavier beads.
Finally, I ended up with her tree being exactly like I wanted it. Delicate and beautiful like Lyric!
For some reason, the other two trees went together rather easily. Perhaps I had learned my lesson from the struggles with Lyric’s tree. Maybe God was tired of my moaning and groaning and blessed me with success.
One of the things that makes a difference is how the branches are fluffed at the end of the process. If the tree is moved very much, the owner of the tree must fiddle with each branch so the tree is well balanced, not leaning one way or the other but straight and true.
This last picture is my prayer for my sweet baby girls. Well, not babies, 21, 19, and 5. But they will always be my little angel babies.
Anyway. I arranged the trees close together. That is my prayer for all my kids and grandkids. I’ve asked the older cousins many times to make sure that the ‘littles’ feel part of the family in a way that will make beautiful memories for them. I pray they will provide opportunities for experiences for them and each other throughout their lives. Mostly, I pray that these precious offspring will daily grow stronger in their faith and live straight and true according to God’s word. I pray their ‘trees of life’ will be a forest of believers who always have each other’s backs in prayer and caring.
This post was going to go a different direction, but this is how it ended up – a prayer instead of an object lesson.
So I can’t finish this and have to drop a second blog this weekend along the same topic to get it out of my system.
Blessings
Kara Beth
