Be Better

Appreciate the Value of Trials by Fire

How the Jack Pine tree can help you find value in your trials

What was your last trial by fire? What did you learn from it? Is there a way to find value in it?

If you are coping with a chronic or mental illness, you may feel that your struggles come one right after another. Even if that’s true, can you gain anything positive from your trials?

Today, you’ll learn a valuable lesson from the Jack Pine tree. For this tree, fire is a necessity. Its experience may help you to see where a fire was equally important in your life.

“Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved.”

-Helen Keller

Lessons From the Jack Pine

Jack Pines are a species of coniferous tree that grows in the forests of Canada and across the Midwest and northeast United States. The trees are also called scrub pines or grey pines.

Why are you learning about pine trees today? Because there is something unique in the way this tree reproduces.

While most pines develop pinecones that open over time releasing their seeds, the Jack Pine produces a cone with a tight resin seal. Rain, weather, and time do not by themselves remove this wax covering, so the trees’ only hope of reproducing remains under lock and key.

However, these unique pinecones are not indestructible. Rather, they just need a little encouragement to release their precious cargo.

That little nudge must be a temperature equal to or greater than 122° F (50° C). Most often this help comes in the form of a literal trial by fire.

The best type of fire is not the raging, destructive type that frequently makes the news. Instead, these trees need a low-burning flame that stays close to the ground and never reaches the tree’s canopy. This type of burn is hot enough to release the cone’s seeds without doing serious damage to the tree itself.

Trials by Fire That Produce Gifts

In many ways, you are like the sealed cone of the Jack Pine. No, you don’t need intense heat to reproduce, though a little heat isn’t a bad thing. Instead, the flames in your life often reveal what you are capable of doing. Those new insights are the precious cargo locked inside of you.

Usually, you can’t see these gifts amid a serious trial. Just like literal fire can terrify, the trials you face in life often do as well.

Living with multiple illnesses, I often feel like I am being thrown from one burning flame to the next. If you are a mental illness warrior or spoonie, you know exactly what I mean.

Usually, you can’t see these gifts amid a serious trial.

One of the recent flames that has been nipping at my heels has to do with anxiety. I live in a near-constant state of fear that makes leaving the house, being in public, and driving extremely difficult.

Some months ago, I asked my doctor if there was anything we could do to improve things. I don’t have the luxury of not working, so leaving the house and driving are daily necessities.

My doctor decided that I should try a new medicine. Short story, it was a terrible idea.

Now that some months have passed, I can see the seeds that released during that trial. Out of necessity, I learned new coping skills to keep me functioning even when my anxiety was at its worst.

The World Looks Different

When a fire sweeps through a forest, even a healthy burn, things will look drastically different afterward. Health, money, and relationship trials might scorch your figurative earth and leave you feeling like you’re in a foreign land once it’s passed.

That’s how I felt. In the midst of the worst of the increased anxiety, I felt like things were constantly spinning and always slightly blurred.

When things started to slow down again, and I finally started to feel more like my normal self, my world looked different.

In reality, nothing had changed, at least not on the outside. Instead, my perception of things was altered.

My life couldn’t stop when things were at their worst, so I pushed myself forward.

My life couldn’t stop when things were at their worst, so I pushed myself forward. Granted, I missed more than a few events and several days of work, but I kept going.

The lesson I learned now helps me to recognize when others are struggling. There’s a new insight that allows me to see when they are coping with anxiety. This isn’t so much of a sight as a gut feeling.

I never really bought into the whole empath-thing in the past, but now I can’t help but wonder if there is some truth to it. There are times I walk into a room and everyone in the room will be laughing and smiling, but my attention immediately goes to one person. In that instant, I can feel their anxiety and turmoil.

My world is different yet better than before.

Look For Your Gifts

When a fire in the forest burns out, the seeds of the Jack Pine are difficult to find. They are there, in the newly altered soil, ready to start a new life, but you have to look to find them.

Likewise, when the worst of your trial passes, it may take some looking to see what gifts you gained.

Maybe you have a new empathy. There could be a friend you grew closer to during your ordeal. You may have learned new details about others around you.

Sometimes your seed is a sense of peace in knowing that a terrible thing happened, but you survived it.

…a terrible thing happened, but you survived it.

Whatever it might be, if you look for it, you will find some gift that makes your world better.

Interestingly, the Jack Pine cone will release its seed in one other circumstance — intense cold. In fact, temperatures that drop to -51° F (-46° C) will cause the cone’s wax to become brittle and break, thus releasing the seeds.

Similarly, not all trials look the same. Just because you don’t see flames doesn’t mean that you’re not in the midst of one.

Application

Over the next few days, set aside a little time to think about your last trial by fire. How did it change your life? What new things did you learn about yourself? What did you learn about other people?

If you are enduring a trial or just stepping out of one, it may be hard to see anything. In the early moments after a forest fire burns out, there’s still smoke and ash to deal with, so don’t beat yourself up if things aren’t clear right away.

Still, make sure you take a moment to think things over. Look for subtle differences in the way you feel or act or the things you notice in others. Watch how your heart and mind respond when you talk with loved ones and reflect on any changes.

What doesn’t kill us, makes us stronger.

With a little contemplative thought, you will find gifts, some small seeds, that your trial released.

As the adage goes, “What doesn’t kill us, makes us stronger.” Recognize the strength you’ve gained and celebrate the victory. Yes, surviving a trial by fire is a great win.

What did you learn from your last trial? Please leave your thoughts in the comments below.

Until next time, keep fighting.

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