We Can Learn Much From Reading Our Children’s Bedtime Stories

I used to read to both of my children a touching bedtime story called “The Giving Tree” By Shel Silverstein. It was a very profound story for being a childrens’ book. In the story, there is a tree that loved a little boy and gave everything she had to that boy as he grew older and his needs changed and the way he treated the tree changed, but the tree kept giving. The story ends as a wrinkly, old man sits on a stump as that was all the tree had left to give, but the tree was happy.

The “Giving Tree” to adults was our home. We bought our home and we loved it and it loved us. It protected us from the outside elements and kept us safe. We took care of the home and painte it and fixed it up and our home was happy.  Time passed on and our needs changed.  We wanted a new car, vacations or to pay off credit cards and we asked our “GIVING HOME” if it could give us some money. Our home said, ” I’m sorry, but I have no money. I have equity. Take my equity, then you will have money and you will be happy.  And so we took an appraisal of our home and closed on a CASHOUT REFI to make ourselves happy and our home was happy.   Time went by again and we neglected our “GIVING HOME” and then we went back to our home again and asked our home to give us a 2nd home or investment property.  Our home said, ” I have no house, but I have a little more equity and you can take it all and have your vacation home and then you will be happy.” We took the last bit of equity and stripped the home of all its financial value and we wre happy and our home was happy.

The moral of the story is that our home would and will give us anything we wanted if it could for us to be happy even if it were to the demise of the home. Read the story ”The Giving Tree” and replace the word tree with home and see if it doesn’t really hit home.