In 1959 one of many acorns dropped from the ancient oak trees along an old hay field.  From them came saplings, all but a very few mowed down very soon afterwards...spared by a stone wall that was formed by the farmer's great grandfather who cleared the field in the dawn of the 19th century.

One slender sapling survived at the edge of the field and began to grow quickly and straight towards heaven.

The old farmer came along and repurposed the field to be a cow pasture.  It was necessary to install a barbed wire fence around the enclosure for to keep the cows in.

The farmer utilized the young tree, thin as it was, as a post on which to attach the barbed wire.  There was no regard for the tree other than for this purpose and a single post near the tree would have spared its beauty.

The tree survived the assault and though now maimed for life, the tree continued to grow.

During the 1970s the farmer's health went down and the cows were all sold off.  The field remained as a place for the woods to reclaim.  That it did, very quickly.  The house ran down too, the barn, already in bad shape fell into ruins.  In 1981, the farmer died and his wife several years later followed suit.  The house became the property of some other family.  There would never be a farm there again.

As for the tree, left alone and continuing to grow in spite of the barbed wire, grew around it.  It even grew out along the wire, creating a mis-formed appearance to it.  By this time, the barbed wire had been completely grown around, such that the wire ran through the very pith of the tree where once its young bark was.

Soon bugs and other pests began attacking the tree at its weak point...the barbed wire, and it became sickly, but still surviving.

It never measured up to its siblings that had been spared the mowing machine that day.  It began to rot in its heart.  The siblings cared not about the barbed wire that ran through their relative.

Now, a half a century later, the tree has dead limbs and live ones.  Only stubs of steel wire jutted out from the tree and anyone walking through there would never know there was once a farm there.  The barn lay forgotten under a dense thicket of blackberry bushes.  The field is now a young forest, completely impassable due to the underbrush and thorns and burdocks.  The damage done by the barbed wire and the farmer who had no regard for the tree is permanent, when in its early years could have been corrected.  Now, the disorder can never be removed for the sake of the tree's life.

Mothers and fathers, never do this to your children.  Please...don't  I say this with tears.

Those first five years will make your children for the rest of their lives.  Like the pebble thrown into a lake, every part feels it and it never stops.  Like a tree borne with barbed wire... they will grow, but the essence will never be the same.

I know... When I saw that tree in the woods, near the stone wall that was created from the days of the hayfield, I beheld it and wept.  I could relate with it.

Lone tree amidst long lost memories...I feel for you and crown you with the glory that is rightfully yours.  Nobody knows but you and I.  In quietness you stand giving God the glory for his many wonders.  In your disfigurement you are still God's creation and by means of His love, have the same essence as the most whole of the trees in your forest however unappreciated you may be in the minds of those who have passed by you.

Under God's heaven, I have noticed.  I can relate... It were, by the providence of God, that I should walk along that stone wall and find you.