Nailed It

A little girl in our neighborhood rides by our house sometimes on her tricycle and her mom walks behind. She's cute. She stops on the sidewalk just past our tree and lets out a loud giggle everytime she goes by. Her mom told me one day that her little girl laughs at our tree's face. She really likes our Mr. Tree. Quite a long while ago - maybe last year - we nailed on a set of eyes, a nose and a mouth to our tree. I am glad we chose a friendly tree face instead of a scary one. I don't think the little girl would have liked the scarey one. It is amazing how close the color of the fake face blends in to the color of the tree. It looks almost real. (Don't ya just get the chills?) Then one day the nose fell off and we checked the nail. The tree had actually grown itself around the nail. (Kind of like an ingrown toenail but this probably doesn't hurt the tree - in case any of you are tree huggers.) Dave had to get a tool to pry out the nail and then re attach the nose. The eyes and mouth are firmly imbedded by their nails. Dave explained that as the tree had grown it's ring over the time since the face had been nailed there that it had actually grown into the nails. The nose just wasn't on the nail just right and that is probably why it got knocked off when there wasn't enough nail for the hook on the back of the nose to hold on to. Last night in the middle of the night - can you figure why I would think of this THEN - I got to thinking about that tree. (The nose fell off a couple weeks ago so why I got this thought now is a wonderment for sure.) I wonder how many "features" that we have chosen to add to our person have actually been nailed to our life. What have we allowed to become part of us or what have we grown ourself around? I suppose this could be a good thing or a bad thing. It could be something like a habit - good or bad. What things do I nail to my life? What things SHOULD I nail to my life? What things need a tool to remove from my life that need not have been grown into my life. Someone said that you are what you eat. I guess you are also what you think - what you believe - what you spend time with. Perhaps the word eat could be interchanged with consume. I purposely nailed those facial features to my tree. I hope I nail good things onto my life. I would hope that those who pass by would smile at what they see. Hopefully the features I have grown into are not scary ones that turn little kids or anyone else away. What have YOU nailed on lately??.