There is a tree outside my window. It grows in many directions and has been cut many times in the past. Gardeners have tried to shape it. Some have tried to support it as it leans.
Now, I have come to live here. It is my turn to tend the tree. As I look it over, it is not the most beautiful tree I have ever seen.
I look close and I see a family of woodpeckers have hollowed out one of the dead branches and made several homes.
I imagine the life of that tree. The growth, the loss, the continual storms it weathers. I think of all the times it struggles to stand straight and tall. How it grows back when it looses a limb. How it holds to the ground to support itself.
Imagine the "Growing Pains" it must feel as it stands alone. Imagine the eternal struggle to reach for the heavens. Imagine the home it gives, even as a part of it dies.
There are lessons all around us. Those struggles, you feel, are really just growing pains.