Thanksgiving Tree

by Kim Rahebi, MPH, CPH, HCNHS PhD student

My name is Kim, and I am an active member of the Fort Worth Climate Safe Neighborhood Coalition as well as Garden Frogs (a new gardening group and horticulture club at TCU). Both of these endeavors were initiatives borne through the auspices of RxPLORE.

I am writing this first blog at my church home during Thanksgiving week of Fall 2023. While the themes of this blog may seem all over the place, I hope I can demonstrate my compassion for environmental consciousness, food insecurity, homelessness, and mental health during this season of gratitude. Let’s begin...

This fall semester, I was able to take a course with the latter called Mind Body Ecology. While I’ve certainly taken philosophy classes before, this was my first time doing a deep dive into a focused content area.  One of our recent experiential assignments was to commune meditatively with a tree (and animal) and then reflect on that experience.  I did the assignment, presented on it in class, and moved on to the next obligation on my seemingly endless list of PhD tasks.

I didn’t expect to do the assignment again today, and it certainly didn’t occur to me that I had done it many times before without realizing it.  Now would be a good time to introduce y’all to my tree.  I don’t have a particular name for her, but I do refer to her as My Heart Tree.  This tree witnessed the spring and summer of a love that promised to last forever.  She shaded us and eavesdropped on our secrets, hilarious faux pas, and plans for a future filled with mission work.  I dreamed of getting married under that tree.  She was my sole comfort when that love violently imploded and I received a cancer diagnosis the next day.  I watched her lose her leaves as she watched me swiftly lose weight...and slowly lose my mind.  Even now my heart pounds painfully as I remember those years of horrible grief and humbling mortality.  I’m still amazed that I ever survived at all.  How many times did I sit under that tree and sob until I became ill?  How many prayers and pleads did she witness?  When my health became so precarious that death threatened, I actually went to say goodbye to her.  That’s when I took this picture.

 I have not seen her since then, until today.

Since coming back to my church home for Mission Together Sunday, it’s been a sleepless marathon of mission work and fellowship, day after day.  We made giant welcome baskets for Family Promise of Collin County, filled countless bagged lunches, and made hundreds of breakfast burritos for People Who Love People.  Both of these missions are in service to those who are experiencing homelessness.  In the evenings, I prepare the food, I wake up before dawn to warm up all the food, drive to church to pick up more food, then setup in front of God’s Pantry to share this bounty with worthy souls who are hungry in one of the most affluent counties in the state. 

As I was driving back to church afterwards, I felt an unexpected yet familiar pull on my heart: go visit your tree.  She has not seen you in too many seasons.  The last time you were there, you were tearfully saying goodbye.  Go show her you’re still alive and standing. 

I was crying even before I pulled up in front of her.  I guiltily sat in front of her today, and apologized for my long absence and the nature in which I had last left her.  I noticed horizontal cuts on her trunks.  I had not seen these before, but they did not look new either.  When looking back at the old photo I took of her when I went to say goodbye, I noticed that she had underbrush around her trunk.  She doesn’t anymore, suggesting that someone is taking care of her, or so I hope.  So, perhaps she’s had those cuts for a while and they were hidden.  Maybe I simply could not see them through my years of tears.  I’m grateful she’s still standing, in spite of them. 

I talked to her, as I have countless times before.  I told her about school, church, and my heart.  I did something different today, though: I asked her to pray for me.  I know that sounds peculiar, and I certainly felt weird asking.  Are Christians even “allowed” to do that?  I did it anyway.  She is, after all, God’s creation.  She has witnessed seasons of my life, as I’ve witnessed seasons of hers.  She watched me fall in love, fall ill, and fall apart.  She watched me walk away from her to follow a path I did not choose nor anticipate.  She watched my heart swell then shatter… years later, she is still watching me clumsily try to put the pieces (of my heart and life) back together.  She has been a symbol of encouragement for my faith.  I have enjoyed sunny seasons of love and blessings, and endured seasons so bitterly cold and dark that I lost every leaf of hope as I came dangerously close to death… yet somehow I survived… and so too did my faith.  During this season of gratitude, I pray My Heart Tree witnesses my healing.  I pray I stand before her again one day, wholly healed, in spite of all my scars.

Happy Thanksgiving, friends.