How Trees Grow Past Their Wounds

In the 1970s, plant pathologist Dr. Alex Shigo made a discovery that changed how we understand tree biology. When a tree is wounded — struck by lightning, gouged by a lawnmower, broken by a storm — it does not heal the way human skin does. It cannot regenerate what was lost. Instead, the tree does something remarkable: it walls off the damaged area through a process Shigo called CODIT — Compartmentalization of Decay in Trees. Chemical barriers form around the wound, sealing it away. Then the tree grows new wood around and beyond the injury. If you cut a tree open decades later, you will find the old wound still there, encased in rings of new growth.

Forgiveness works much the same way.

When someone wounds us deeply, we sometimes wait for the day when it will not hurt at all — as if forgiveness means the scar disappears entirely. But that is not what the God of all healing promises. Forgiveness does not erase what happened. It walls off the infection of bitterness so it cannot spread through every branch of our lives. And then, by the grace of the Almighty, we grow — new rings of trust, of compassion, of life — around and beyond the wound.

The hurt may still be there if you cut deep enough. But it no longer defines the shape of the tree.