The trouble tree

At the end of a day of duties and hard work, it can be really hard to disconnect from the office and the stress so that we don’t take it into our homes with us at night. The last thing our families want to deal with is our stress from the day – they are excited to spend time with us having fun and enjoying one another. So how do we suddenly switch modes and leave it all behind when work is over?

Our families deserve a happy “us” and that means we have to train ourselves to leave a hard day behind us and allow ourselves to focus on our families when we get home. I recently heard a story called “The Trouble Tree” that shared a great example of how we can make that happen.

Here it is:

The carpenter who was hired to help a man restore an old farmhouse had just finished his first day on the job. First of all, on his way to work he had a flat tire that cost him an hour’s worth of pay, then his electric saw broke, and after work, his old pickup truck refused to start.

His new boss volunteered to give him a lift home and the whole way to his house the carpenter sat in stone silence as he stared out his window. Yet on arriving, he invited his boss in for a few minutes to meet his family. As they walked toward the front door, he paused briefly at a small tree, touching the tips of the branches with both hands. When he opened the door, he underwent an amazing transformation. His tanned face was one big smile as he hugged his two small children and kissed his wife.

Afterward, the man walked his boss to his car to say thank you. Now on their way out of the house, the boss’ curiosity got the best of him so he had to ask the man about the tree on the front porch. He said, I noticed when you came up on the porch before going into your house you stopped and touched the tree, why?

“Oh, that’s my trouble tree,” he replied. “I know I can’t stop from having troubles out on the job, but one thing’s for sure – my troubles don’t belong in the house with my wife and children. So I just hang them up on the tree every night when I come home. Then in the morning, I pick them up again.”

“Funny thing is,” he smiled, “when I come out in the morning to pick ‘em up, they aren’t nearly as many as I remember hanging up the night before.”

What a great idea!  We should all come up with our own symbolic “Trouble Tree” to drop our problems off at night before we enter our homes.

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You can come out bitter or you can come out better. Don’t just go through it, grow through it. There is a purpose in your pain.

~ Joel Osteen

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It’s not the load that breaks you down, it’s the way you carry it. Carry it by the comfortable handles of gratitude for what’s positive and that it is not worse, rather than the uncomfortable edges of bitterness for the negatives and that it is not better.

~ Lena Horne