What's 50 feet tall, 8 feet wide and surrounded by pecans? You guessed it. It's a pecan tree.

Not just any pecan tree. It was The Pecan Tree. At least, to me it was. It was in my grandparents backyard, and it was the center of all fifteen grandchildren's "fun" fall afternoons at Pawpaw and Grandmother's. Picking pecans for the "grand prize" of a Pawpaw kiss (somehow we always thought the prize would change to something really cool, it didn't). The tree had a big sheet of metal wrapped around the lower part of the trunk, to be totally honest, I've never gotten a straight answer as to why that was. I think it was something about squirrels. I do know that we weren't supposed to touch it. In fact, as a child at a family party I was asked what Pawpaw's favorite thing to say was. "Don't touch The Pecan Tree," was my answer.

This tree had 50+ years under its roots. My grandparents had 64 years of marriage behind them. It was on their 64th anniversary that the pecan tree "breathed its last", so to speak. Bad storms came through the whole area, a tornado took down the old, the beloved, the great plunket pecan tree.

Of course, it wasn't the only tree in my grandparents' or the neighbors' yard. A few other trees also took a beating, but none quite as absolute as this 50 foot tall, eight feet wide, massive pecan tree. That doesn't make sense. Pawpaw, as pawpaws always do, had an answer.

Ants.

For 50 years the pecan tree had graced us with its presence, ants graced it by eating away at it from the inside out, so that when the storm came, the seemingly strong, immovable tree snapped, collapsed, died.

After explaining this, preacher-man-pawpaw looked at me and said, "There's a lesson in that."
And so there is.

You ever feel like The Pecan Tree? On the surface, wow, you're impressive. You do all the right things, you say all the right things; you look the part. You are strong.You are immovable. But you have ants. You have demons. And they eat away at the parts of you that you keep hidden from the world. They take your faith, your hope, your compassion, your sense of purpose, your love for God and people. They take away all the things that you can fake. And you can make people believe. Even when you don't.

But then, the storm hits.

While others around you who may seem lesser or weaker still stand, you snap. Because you have nothing left in you to hold you up. You're just a shell. A shell, snapped, laying on the ground.Ever feel like that? And we blame the storm. We blame the winds and the rain and the everything else. We blame our fall on the exterior.We never think to blame the ants.Because the truth is, our demise began long before the storm.It began when we let the ants make a home in our heart.
We always talk about the storms of life. Here's the facts: storms happen. They are uncontrollable. But they aren't the problem. The probably is controllable: ants.

I don't know what your ants are. Sometimes I'm not sure what my ants are until I feel them crawling around inside me, eating away at me, weakening who I am.

Jesus is my pesticide. (Bet you've never heard that before.) Jesus is the Rock to which I hold when the ants of sadness, stress loneliness, discouragement, or hopelessness set in. Jesus doesn't promise a stormless life. Storms happen. But if you've had Jesus inside you, the ants can't eat away at you until you are a shell. In Jesus, you are more than a shell, more than a body. You are strong. You are immovable. You are more than the pecan tree.