By Blake Davis

"Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God." - Psalms 42:11

The ice arrived overnight.

I rushed, freezing and exhausted, to load my family of five into my four-seater car (the only vehicle not trapped behind a barricade of fallen trees, limbs and 70 feet of downed power lines).

Sounds like musket-fire reverberating every 90 seconds around the neighborhood, with movie-like timing, I loaded the last of our necessities as an explosive CRACK sounded behind me. I turned and watched as the top third of my beloved Southern Magnolia -the Totoro Tree- split and tumble the long fall to the frozen ground.

The dramatic loss was the top of the Magnolia.

But in the months that followed, I found myself thinking of the hackberry.

Hackberries have a typical lifespan of 150-200 years; this one fell around 40.

After the cleanup was complete (a massive thank you to the disaster crews from Otter Creek and Brentwood Baptist for their help), I grieved the change to my yard, the loss of the canopy that had shaded almost the entirety of my fenced yard the previous week.

But mostly I grieved the loss of TIME.

Time has always been a complicated subject for me.

For much of my life, I believed it was in short supply.

Looking at the fallen tree, all I could see were the decades spent to become what it was.

As I walked the now-empty space, another realization began to emerge.

Nature Fills Empty Spaces

The funny thing is, the more I thought about the hackberry, the more I realized I never actually liked that tree.

It gave great shade and privacy, but that shade kept the wettest corners of my yard a consistently muggy mosquito breeding ground, and covered everything beneath it with woolly aphid honeydew. (I’m sorry to share with you the burden of this knowledge, but that sticky brown film beneath most Tennessee hackberries is not sap… It’s aphid excrement. Good luck ignoring that for the rest of your life.)

As I walked around the newly opened space, my grief slowly turned to curiosity, then ideation, then excitement.

Nature fills empty spaces.

Trees' crowns extend toward available sunlight, closing gaps. A storm takes down a tree, a garden bed is neglected, soil is disturbed, and before long, something WILL begin growing there. Volunteer seedlings appear, and invasive species take root.

Invasives aren’t malicious as they crowd out beneficial and ecologically keystone species. They are simply opportunistic. Nature will fill every available space. People are no different.

The question is never whether something will grow.

The question is whether we will make the choice or let nature choose for us.

Invasives

I was a sweet, thoughtful, and wildly oblivious little boy, which is likely why I was unaware of the terminal details of my genetic condition until my very early teens.

Like overnight frozen rain creating an inch of radial ice on every limb of the hackberry, the sudden weight of the knowledge pulled the roots of my young life up from the soil, leaving an empty, disturbed space.

Without clear vision for intentional planting, empty spaces became host to weeds like depression, anger, despair, and that most destructive invasive species: self-pity, which -like the Ailanthus altissima I continue to fight all over my yard- crowds out beneficials and, when cut, responds by forcing new shoots from the soil in a wide radius.

I could have been standing under the most beautiful, mature hackberry, an incredibly resilient tree, host to multiple butterfly species, but all I could see would be the mosquitos and woolly aphid honeydew.

It took time, but once I finally let go of needing to know ‘why?’, I realized the choices were simple:

I could invest my attention into wishing things were different.

Or I could cultivate faith, hope, and gratitude.

Neither choice would change the outcome.

But how I experience the journey would be vastly different.

This mindset served me well for years.

When time feels scarce, faith becomes a pillar, hope becomes practical, and gratitude fosters inner peace.

Then adulthood arrived, and a miracle.

An Abundance of Space

While living in a house with my first garden, a pharmaceutical breakthrough expanded my life expectancy by more than twice its original estimate.

My wife still describes me running circles around our small den, shocked at the ability to do so without my lungs losing capacity for breath.

Feeling the freedom of time, we started the journey of becoming parents, and a few years later, we were able to move to a house with over twice the yard as my first garden.

Both my inner and outer landscapes expanded with tremendous new space to cultivate.

And nature fills spaces.

Nearly everything growing in my new yard was invasive. Tree of Heaven and Japanese honeysuckle, left untouched for years, held claim over most of the available space.

As I’ve worked to fight back these invasive species in my yard (the ‘hack and squirt’ method being the most successful thus far), my mental garden began to fill with the extraordinary concerns, responsibilities, and worries unique only to those privileged to believe they have time.

Our family grew quickly, we made career choices that increased long-term stability but added tremendous stress. I planted with careless abandon, excited at the prospect of additional space to grow and time to witness it.

Parenthood introduces worries I never knew existed. Career growth demands attention and time. Mass plantings grow quickly and need tending. Long-term goals require sacrifice.

I rushed to make up for lost time. I let life get so cluttered and busy that I began to feel bound and stressed by the everyday obligations it takes to build a full life.

Overwhelmed, stressed, exhausted, and confused about having these feelings- as if I were trapped by my own choices.

No longer needing to hope for a future, I was striving so hard to maximize it that I forgot the choice:

Instead of cultivating gratitude for the very life I had hoped and dreamed for, I let nature choose what filled that space.

A Forty-Year-Old Tree

I started this article on my 40th birthday, roughly the final age of the fallen hackberry. And as I stand here staring at the empty space it left behind, the patterns of my life begin to come together.

Nature is already filling it with young invasives, weeds, and young hackberry shoots reaching up from what remains of the stump.

They all seek the same thing: space.

My mind at forty is no different.

The question was never whether something would occupy that space.

The question is whether I will choose what grows there.

Invasives will always arise.

But standing here at forty, I have outlived the hackberry.

My soul will no longer be cast down.

The space before me is open.

I will cultivate my faith, steward my hope, and grow my gratitude.

I have land on which to stand, the choice of what to grow, and enough time to cultivate it.

A Blessing for Storms

For anyone reading this who is entering, weathering, or recovering from a storm -be it the Nashville ice-pocalypse or the varied storms of life- I pray whatever new spaces are revealed by its passing find you with the inspiration and capability of cultivating something better, that moves your to the dreams you always wished could be, and whatever damage or loss incurred is looked back upon years from now as the foundations that grew to be the gardens of your dreams.

Amen.