This is not the end.

Last summer, my husband planted a tree in our yard. My birthday had come around in March and when he asked me what I might like to have as a gift, I asked him for some landscaping. Specifically, a tree. We only have a few trees in our yard as it is, and some of them seem to be on their last leg. Last limb?

So after careful consideration, I chose a fig tree. A beautiful, bushy fig tree with big broad leaves.

We did the research about where was the best place to plant such a tree and watched a bunch of YouTube videos on hole digging and soil prep, planting techniques and fig tree care.

Then, on a sunny day at the beginning of last summer, my husband planted our new tree in the front yard. He bought special organic soil and fertilizer. He painstakingly weeded and applied mulch around the tree. We christened it Miss Figgins and began trying to care for our newest addition.

Summer 2016 was a scorcher in East Tennessee. We experienced a drought that stretched on and on, creating the dry conditions that ultimately helped the November wildfires spread quickly through the Smokies.

All summer long and into fall, my husband and I took turns watering Miss Figgins. We saw her droop and drop a few leaves but through it all I held out hope that she'd make it. We never stopped believing that one day, we'd have a ginormous fig tree in our yard that we planted during the first full summer we lived in our first house together.

A few weeks ago, I was walking around our yard taking inventory of different things. Our handful of buttercups along the back fence had already bloomed and withered, but our monkey grass by the basement door was coming in. As I rounded the corner of our backyard to come up the hill toward the front, I spotted the fig tree. From a distance, it looked brown and small. There were no leaves at all and upon closer inspection, I saw no buds forming either. I broke off the end of a small branch and instead of it being springy and green inside, it was brown and brittle.

I knew right away that Miss Figgins had not survived. Later that night, I broke the news to my husband. He said that he already knew, but was trying to figure out a way to tell me. We both said it was a shame, but life goes on.

Today is Good Friday. My husband had the day off so he decided to mow our yard. After he had finished, we were eating some lunch when he mentioned offhandedly that he had gone ahead and mowed down what was left of the fig tree.

This news hit me square in the feels and out of nowhere I burst into tears. I don't know if it was because of the finality of it or the fact that holidays can sometimes bring deeply buried issues bubbling to the surface. But I wept and wept for Miss Figgins.

Even now as I type this a few hours later, I could still just bawl. I know it's just a tree. It's not really the tree I'm sad about.

Easter is a special day for Christians. It's a day that symbolizes a hope we have in the possibility of new life. And as a believer, I hold firmly to that possibility. It's not just a nice idea, but something that has truly become real to me because of my belief.

But not everything gets to live. Not every relationship gets to thrive, no matter how much painstaking effort we might pour into it. All the tending in the world might not have kept our fig tree alive. There were other conditions and factors totally out of our control that played a big part in her demise. It's a helpless feeling though. And if you've ever felt this way about a person you love or a relationship you treasured, you  know that it's leagues beyond how one might feel about a tree.

Sometimes, no matter how hard we try to keep it away, death still comes. The death of an identity you had always clung to. The death of a relationship you thought completely defined you. The death of an idea or a belief system that you had always marched under the banner of.

Letting go is hard. Admitting defeat even more so. There's part of me that would have enjoyed trying to bring Miss Figgins back. But how long could that have gone on? And how frustrating might it have been? Sometimes we just have to admit that a loss has occurred and try to move pas it.

And in the meantime, those of us who want to can keep holding tight to the belief that death is not always the end, but just a new beginning.

Dual Citizenship - How to Make Yourself at Home in Both Places

We have to find a way to live in both places. One place is called the here and now. This is where the bills are always due, the oil has to be changed regularly, you gotta brush & floss every day, get your teeth cleaned every six months or else get cavities, and the Internet sometimes goes out while the router resets itself. 

In the here and now, dust bunnies collect on every surface and under every piece of furniture, even when you feel like you just dusted the day before. Taxes are due. People are not always happy with you. You say the wrong thing and more people are not happy with you. 

You have to choose the right foods to eat. The right ways to move your body, the right ways to cover your body, the right things to do with your body and the way in which you present your body to the world (including the words you say with your mouth). 

You have to think about all these things in the here and now plus a million more. 

But there is another land. One that we often straddle the fence in (if we're lucky). It is called the world of possibilities. 

In the world of possibilities anything is possible. Everything is there because anything is possible in this world. It's like if the here and now were able to be contained in a shoe box, the world of possibilities would be the ocean. 

We're so stuck in our own little shoe boxes with our own little trinkets and things that we've collected, including our perspectives and the baggage that we carry that we really do forget that there is a whole big ocean of possibility out there. 

And it's all ours for the taking. Of course every possibility is not meant for us. But that's okay because there are plenty of wonderful things that were meant just for each of us. All of these wonderful things are just bobbing along out there in the ocean in the world of possibility and we get to jump in and collect them. 

But while we're stuck in our little shoe boxes, it can be hard to remember that world is still out there. 

There are some people who live just in the shoe box, always focused on the here and now, always striving for their five year plan or their 10 year plan, or just making it through that one day, til 5 o'clock quitting time. Surviving.  

But so much of what we could experience would be different if we were willing to embrace the idea of possibility. 

In the world of possibility, we can be our true selves. 

Do we have to straddle the fence? I feel like in order to have dual citizenship, we must really exist some in both worlds. Because if we just stay in one world all the time then we miss out on what the other world can offer us. 

Completely neglecting the here and now doesn't seem like the best option, because that might mean the bills don't get paid or there are no clean clothes to wear, or plaque builds up because we haven't been to the dentist in ten years. 

But I like to think that completely neglecting the world of possibilities can be even more detrimental to us. If you're just stuck inside the shoe box rolling a little marble around in your hand because it feels comfortable and you recognize it and it feels safe and secure, then you're probably going to miss out on all the things that were meant for you. 

Not things that you have to go out and take from someone else but things that are out there just floating along with your name on them. Because there's enough for all of us.

Competency is not calling.

Have you ever been really good at something? Maybe you've always known you were good. Like it was part of your awareness of who you were from a young age. Or maybe you spent your whole life totally oblivious, until an opportunity came for you to demonstrate a certain task or participate in a hobby and you were like, dang, "I'm really good at that." 

When I was a kid, my dad made me take piano lessons for several years. The problem was I never learned to read music. I didn't practice enough and my teacher totally called me out on it, but when it was time for our quarterly recitals, I memorized my pieces and played them like a champ. To my family who saw me play that big grand piano on the stage of the Bryan Fine Arts Building, I was totally competent. Except I wasn't...it was sort of a sham.

Playing piano was not my calling.

Once this was apparent, my folks let me take voice lessons instead. But things got dangerous when they realized I had a decent singing voice. This would usher in a period of my childhood that I remember as "The family is gathered, and my mom is forcing me to put on a performance for them."

She was a stage mom, minus the stage...unless you count the raised platform of our living room fireplace and my humble boombox, with its six D batteries.

I enjoyed singing to a degree, but I didn't live for it. I wasn't one of those kids who would grow up to be a Lee Ann Rimes or a Taylor Swift (as if you didn't know this). Just like piano, singing would become yet another thing that wasn't my calling.

Except the difference between singing and piano was my singing was pretty good. It's possible people were just being polite, but strangers always paid me nice compliments after each performance and I was invited back to sing for various events (mostly church, but also weddings). And, like I said before, I enjoyed it for awhile.

Then when I didn't really want to do it anymore, it was confusing. I missed the compliments, but not really that much. Singing became something I quit doing for an audience and mainly did only in the car with my best friend, when our favorite Backstreet Boys song came on the radio.

This was probably the first time in my life that I was faced with this fact:

Competency is not the same thing as calling.

On up through high school and even college, I would go on to display competency in all sorts of other things (just not soccer...I was terrible at soccer).

But none of the things I was competent at ever felt like my calling.

What is a calling? The dictionary defines it as "a strong urge toward a particular way of life or career; a vocation." 

I'm much more keen on the first part of the definition than the second. I like thinking of a calling as a strong urge toward a way of life, but when you throw the word 'career' in there, it messes with my head.

See, what if your career isn't exactly your calling? This is particularly hard to make sense of if you are good at your career.

I think some people end up in careers that align with their calling. Maybe you're one of them. But there are also people who just happen to be good at something and end up getting paid to do it. We can't confuse this with calling, because it isn't the same thing.

It's kind of like saying I was good at playing piano because I memorized two songs and could play them with my eyes closed. I was competent, but it wasn't what I was put on earth to do.

That's my personal definition of calling, by the way.

To me, a calling is something you were put here to do. What's more, if you couldn't do it anymore, you would feel like you were dead. It's that life-giving thing that the more you do it, the more you want to do it. And alternatively, if you can't do it or just don't do it, you feel like the life is sucked out of you.

Let's play a game. Fill in the blank below to reveal something you may or may not want to know:

If I couldn't _____________________, I'd feel like the light (and life) inside me was snuffed out. 

Maybe your blank contains your current career or vocation. You're one of the lucky ones.

Or, maybe it's something a bit less specific. No matter what, I totally believe there is a calling for each of us.

But whether or not that calling is directly related to our paycheck, those waters are a bit murkier.

Just don't believe the lie that competency or even quality is the same thing as calling. I mean, it's awesome to have gifts and talents. Be so glad that you do.

But know that being really good at something does not make it your calling. Even if you have found yourself in a position or role that you're getting a lot of praise for or getting paid a nice salary to do it.

Remember It's a Wonderful Life, when George Bailey's little brother Harry went on to become the war hero? You know where I'm going with this. If not for George who saved him from the icy water, Harry would not have gone on to do those brave things. It sounds so cheesy, but there's a hole in the world in the shape of you. We all need what each other has to give. And I think most of the people who are living really joyful, productive lives have figured this out.

God, seeing a need, uniquely, exquisitely created and crafted you, as a way to fill what was missing in the world. And each of the world's needs is different. Some fall under a more practical category. It's not my passion to work in the medical profession, but thank goodness we have doctors and nurses who do have this calling. The ones whose calling it is to get up every day and provide those kinds of services and care to people.

I've never felt called to be a teacher. But I'm so grateful to all the wonderful teachers who have touched my life through the years.

I've never felt called to be in politics, but I'm so glad we have people (although not all of them) who are passionate about changing our world for the better and who will work tirelessly to create policies and laws.

And then the world has other needs, for beautiful things like art and music and incredible delicious foods. Things that can revive our crushed spirits and souls, sometimes at just the moment we think it isn't worth going on anymore.

I think it's so important we find out what our calling is and find ways to pursue it. It doesn't mean that our calling gives us the paycheck we want. But it also doesn't mean that just because it doesn't, we should quit trying to pursue our calling in other ways. Other doesn't have to be lesser. Just different.

This blog gives me a place to work out my calling. If I couldn't write and tell my stories and tell your stories, I'd feel like the light inside me was snuffed out. And when I can do those things, I feel like there's a new life force within. It's like a renewing sense of life that only grows, pushing me to do it more and more and more.

My hope is that one day your calling is what you can spend most of your time doing. And until then, I hope you can feel encouraged that you aren't the only one struggling. You're not the only one wondering what the right answer is. You're not the only one afraid you are missing out on something more.