{"id":23729,"date":"2026-01-30T05:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-01-30T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mypeacezone.com\/?p=23729"},"modified":"2026-02-01T06:22:28","modified_gmt":"2026-02-01T12:22:28","slug":"dont-torch-the-tree","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mypeacezone.com\/?p=23729","title":{"rendered":"Don’t Torch the Tree"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This winter storm has taught us many things — one of them being that love sometimes shows up in unexpected forms. Like worrying more about trees than thermostats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While my children were without electricity in the East Texas tundra, bundled up like Arctic explorers, their biggest concern hasn\u2019t been themselves. It\u2019s been their beautiful live oak trees.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One young oak — just three years old — bowed under the weight of the ice. A limb bent low, touching the ground, but it didn\u2019t crack. Still attached. Still alive. Still fighting.<\/p>\n\n\n

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My daughter called with a question born of care and urgency: “Should we use torches to melt the ice?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So I did what any techy mother does — I consulted the internet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The answer was a firm NO!! No heat. No flames. No quick fixes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why? Because rapid heat causes shock. It damages what\u2019s alive beneath the surface. Bark may look fine now, but the injury shows up later — when leaves don\u2019t return, when growth stops, when what seemed helpful actually harms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Instead, the advice was simple and hard — WAIT!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let the ice melt naturally.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Don\u2019t shake the limbs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Don\u2019t force recovery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trust the tree\u2019s resilience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And just like that, the lesson landed squarely on my heart.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How often do we try to \u201ctorch\u201d ourselves — or others — through heavy seasons? We rush healing. We push answers. We apply heat where patience is required. We mean well. We want relief. But sometimes, love looks like restraint.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trees, like people, need time after a hard storm. What bends isn\u2019t always broken. What looks alarming today may straighten itself tomorrow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Live oaks have survived centuries of storms. So have we.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

No torch required. Just time, care, and trust that warmth will return — right on schedule.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHe shall be like a tree planted by the waters, which yields its fruit in its season, and whose leaf does not wither.\u201d Psalm 1:3<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This winter storm has taught us many things — one of them being that love sometimes shows up in unexpected forms. Like worrying more about trees than thermostats. While my children were without electricity in the East Texas tundra, bundled up like Arctic explorers, their biggest concern hasn\u2019t been themselves. It\u2019s been their beautiful live…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":23730,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[33228,1210,33238,6408,1392,19849,40,33241,33227,24856,272,33242,12086,33243,33239],"class_list":["post-23729","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-arctic","tag-blog","tag-dont-torch","tag-electricity","tag-facebook","tag-ice","tag-inspiration","tag-less","tag-live-oak","tag-recovery","tag-resilience","tag-torch","tag-tree","tag-tree-planted-by-waters","tag-tundra"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mypeacezone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23729","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mypeacezone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mypeacezone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mypeacezone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mypeacezone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=23729"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mypeacezone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23729\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23733,"href":"https:\/\/mypeacezone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23729\/revisions\/23733"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mypeacezone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/23730"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mypeacezone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23729"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mypeacezone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23729"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mypeacezone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23729"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}