You can buy them at any of the big box stores, the fake stumps to use as end tables. But I chose to make ours. Well, finish ours…I can’t make a tree. If you were to calculate the hours spent and pay me less than minimum wage, you might say I didn’t “come out ahead.” But I would disagree. I would prove you wrong every time I placed my feet on the sanded cracks. Every time I laid a book on the still breathing wood. It’s the imperfections that I love, that I live beside, and within. A daily reminder to celebrate it in others, in myself.

When I took this photo of my book, I needed a backdrop. Not the perfection of a blank slate. I searched the house for something with character. I had baked bread earlier in the day, and the baking sheet was cooling on the counter. Why not? Didn’t it tell the same story as the stump? I placed it behind the book. Perfectly imperfect. 

I don’t know if it’s obvious, but it is to my heart. It knows, if I come out at all, I come out ahead.