During the planning process of renovating our home, there was a conversation about removing a large tree in our backyard. Our home was built in 1940, which means that tree has likely been standing there for more than eighty-six years. For a while, removing it felt like the practical decision. After sitting with it, we decided to leave it.

Part of that decision came from not wanting another project during what has felt like an endless renovation. But the more I sat with that decision, the more I realized something else. The tree is part of the history of our home.

Its roots have quietly held it in place through storms, droughts, heavy rains, changing seasons, and more than eighty-six years of life. Long before we ever walked onto this property, those roots were already doing unseen work.

I couldn’t stop thinking about that. Nobody sees roots. Nobody compliments roots. Nobody shares roots. Yet roots determine everything that eventually appears above the surface. The fruit gets seen. The roots do the work.

The more I spend time in creation, the more I realize it has been quietly teaching me all along. Jesus often pointed people toward seeds, vineyards, birds, and lilies. Lately, I think I’m beginning to understand why.

Creation has a way of revealing truths we often overlook. Since beginning this blog, I’ve become increasingly aware that every person I meet is carrying a story I cannot see. The most important work in my own life has happened in places nobody else could observe. Because that has been true for me, I’ve grown to believe it is also true for the people I encounter every day. That realization has changed the way I move through the world.

The deepest things God does in us rarely become the headline. They become the lens. The lens changes everything you see, yet the lens itself often goes unnoticed. Most growth happens underground.

One of the greatest honors I experience is when someone trusts me enough to share what they’ve been carrying. Those moments rarely arrive polished. More often they sound like

I’ve learned that those moments are rarely invitations to fix someone. They’re invitations to be present and to witness someone’s unseen work.

Encouragement has become deeply meaningful to me because it allows me to help people see strength they sometimes overlook in themselves. Not strength that suddenly appeared, but strength that has quietly been growing beneath the surface all along.

For a long time, comparison felt almost impossible to escape. Now I’ve started asking different questions

Pastor Dharius Daniels once said, “Admire, don’t desire.” There is so much freedom found in such a simple phrase. It is a beautiful practice of catch and release. I can admire someone else’s fruit without desiring it for myself because I have no idea what it cost them to grow it. Likewise, they have no idea what it has cost me to grow mine.

Something else that I have picked up on is that healthy trees don’t spend all year blooming. They bloom. They bear fruit. They shed. They rest. Yet somehow every season carries its own beauty. Spring blossoms are beautiful. Autumn leaves are beautiful. Deep roots are beautiful. Fruit is beautiful. Neither exists to compete with the other. One sustains, while the other reveals, but both belong.  Perhaps people do too.

As I continue to grow, I’ve noticed my attention shifting. It’s becoming less about what is blooming above the surface and more about faithfully tending to what God is growing beneath it. The more I experience this, the more I believe that’s stewardship. Not manufacturing a life, but receiving one. Receiving the life God has already entrusted to me and stewarding it well.

The more I tend to what He has entrusted to me, the less interested I become in wishing for someone else’s life. That’s when I uncovered something too simple to miss:

Not because they know exactly what tomorrow holds, but because they continue receiving what their Creator provides today. That is when I realized I wasn’t just observing creation, I was learning from it.

At some point, I had unknowingly started trusting my own process more than God’s. I wanted to manage the outcome, rush the season, manufacture the fruit, and understand every step along the way.

Yet, the tree has stood for more than eighty-six years without doing any of those things. It simply keeps receiving, it keeps responding, and it keeps growing.

Maybe this is what trust has always looked like, and it simply took a tree that has stood for more than eighty-six years to show me. Trust isn’t about controlling the process. It’s about trusting the Creator with what He created. The process is life. Life is a gift. The gift was given by God. Gifts are received before they are stewarded.

As I reflected on all of this, I realized there was one more thing healthy roots need, grace. Not just grace for today, but grace for yesterday. If I spend my life condemning who I used to be, I eventually begin starving who I’m becoming. Healthy roots don’t grow in shame. They grow where grace has been received.

The healthier my roots become, the more naturally encouragement becomes the fruit others experience. It reveals itself in the way I love, the way I listen, the way I forgive, and the way I respond when life doesn’t go as planned. The people in my life may never see the roots, but they experience the fruit every time we meet.

This life was never mine to manufacture, it was mine to receive. Once I began receiving it as a gift instead of treating it like a project, I found great joy in stewarding it well. Quietly and faithfully. One season at a time.

Because the truth is I was never meant to be the Gardener, I was simply invited to tend what the Gardener has already been faithfully growing. Unseen work is still work. Hidden growth is still growth. Waiting is not wasting. Becoming often happens long before blooming.

So, as you admire the fruit in someone else’s life, I hope you’ll also remember the roots you cannot see. While you’re remembering theirs, don’t forget your own.

Receive the life God has given you. Tend to it well. Trust Him with what grows from it. One day someone may sit in the shade you’ve provided, enjoy the fruit you’ve borne, or find hope because of the way you’ve loved them. They may never know where it all began and that’s okay.

Roots were never meant to be seen. They were meant to sustain. The fruit gets seen. The roots do the work.

I love you, but God loves you more.

In courage,

Carnell