She Surrenders.

                            She stands tall. Naked and vulnerable. Open to the elements and unforgivably strong to the wind. She bares her imperfections. She realizes now they make up her soul.   It wasn't always this way. This knowledge. This trust and faith she has year after year. She remembers the first time she was stripped down. To the bare branches. It was cold and she felt vulnerable and open. Open to criticism of her nakedness. She thought about what the others may say of her. What her branches really looked like when her beautiful leaves weren't full and flowing. Until they lost theirs too. They may not have spoken of their shedding, but she saw herself in them. They knew they were on the journey together.  Sometimes their branches would touch when the wind would blow, and she felt them. She understood them. She decided to love them anyway. That first winter was the hardest. The cold taught her so much. But so did the sun. Oh, she loved the sun. She could feel it on every branch and into her roots. Eventually She learned to love the cold just the same. It taught her the same lesson. To find joy in the unexpected. The light and the dark. Her roots were strong. It surprised her sometimes when the wind would blow so hard. She tried to stand up straight, so the others would see she could stand it. But one day it happened so fast, and so she surrendered. She felt the wind move through her, and she decided to bend. Bend gracefully to the wind and to the elements. She loved it. She saw how she could bend then get back up. She was just as strong as before. And now she knew what would happen if the wind blew again. She would dance with it instead. As her roots continued to dig deep into the ground, she reached for the sky. She loved the sky. The openness and possibility that it held. She knew the sun would greet her every morning, and so she took faith that she, too, would flower again.   And it did. The buds emerged and she felt so much love for them. She thought at one point she might have lost them forever. Some came back, and others did not. But each one made her glorious. She saw how each one returned with a love she never knew before. She rejoiced. She never really lost them. She knew now, she must shed those parts of her that no longer serve her, so she can return with a deeper faith and a delicious sense of who she is. Year after year she would strip down to her bark, and rejoice in the cycle. Not every season was the same, and so she learned again and again to bow to the power that kept her roots strong and her branches bending. She learned to love this. This cycle that taught her she would always return more beautiful. She learned to love and accept the power of the universe. She was, after all, a beautiful part of all of it.