Welcome! I’m Amber!

It all began with a vision. A result of my parenting journey. Sometime in my earlier years of homeschooling my children caught a love of reading. I can’t even say that it’s anything I did. I really don’t know why some kids love books and others don’t seem to care for them, but I was given 3 kids who wanted to read A LOT.

I began struggling to know what books to place before them. How could I know the content of books that I hadn’t read before from authors I didn’t know? I enjoyed reading, but wasn’t knowledgable in what was wholesome and Kingdom worthy. The library didn’t seem to have much for my early chapter book readers, and what they did recommend we already had read or owned.

So….I had this vision.

A Youth Library

What if there was a library full of vetted books that homeschoolers, or really any conscientious parent, could access that would allow their children to browse shelfs and select with confidence. A place where quality books with valuable storylines would collide with beneficial resources for parents wanting to give their children something more that what a traditional library offers?

Books as Missions

The idea stuck in the back of my mind….for more than a year it rolled around back there. Until one spring morning in 2023, when a missionary came to our church. I left that Sunday with a new vision of how books and literature could not only transform local communities in the US, but could enrich the lives of people all over the globe. What if we could put libraries in schools, missions centers, and public spaces all over the world? It’s a big dream isn’t it?

In college I had travelled to the Dominican Republic and visited a small early elementary school there. During that week in their classroom I observed their small library. It was nothing more than a shelf of random books, most of them in English print with Sharpie translation into Spanish across the pages. The main teacher said often books are “check out” and never return. What if there was a way to put more books, and quality books, in places like that?

What would it look like to use literature as missions?

Another Year Passes….

Another year? Really? Yes, it’s now 2025. The years have been ticking by, and very little has been moving forward on this dream. At least, not much thats visible. One thing I have learned in recent years is that God orchestrates on His plan, His timing, and His pace. A pace that often seems like a snail to my “let’s get up and go” personality.

But while I wait, something new emerges…

A Timeline of Books

During 2024, I entered the fall homeschool year with an excitement to study Ancient History with my kids, that quickly turned stressful by a curriculum that wasn’t working for us.

I sat around with a few friends on an outdoor patio and shared my idea of creating a timeline of picture books from creation to now as a replacement for our history curriculum. Pictures books seemed like a much more realistic way of teaching history to my family, and buying a selected few certainly was easier than trying to pull together book basket materials from all three libraries in the little population 3000-7000 towns that surround us. (To be read…not a lot of options).

I left that day with new ideas and a new vigor to find something that worked for me and my family.

What About Fig Tree?

So, how did Fig Tree get here? Throughout that fall, in a series of what I can only call divine events, I merged the idea of a resource library and a timeline of books into what is now known as the Fig Tree Resource Library. It took me three months just to settle on a name. Yes! Three months! It needed to be “just right” and encompass the vision and mission of what I was about to attempt. It needed to include something about books and literacy, AND hold the potential for a mission non-profit in the future. I wanted both the books of history in a timeline AND resources beyond printed words for families who seek to live their lives and raise their families for the call of Christ.

Remember back in 2023 when that missionary visited my church? It wasn’t just ideas of libraries that were in my mind. God was doing in a work in me in that season of months, and one of the things that was most impactful was a tree analogy. As believers we not only need to be rooted deeply in the Word of God (Christ), but a healthy tree also has abundant upward growth, sways to the movement of the Spirit, and produces fruit. A tree without roots rolls around like a tumbleweed with every wind of doctrine, and a big rootball with sickly branches or leaves does not produce fruit.

In the Parable of the Fig Tree found in Mark 11 Jesus curses the tree for just that reason. No fruit. As I met with a friend one afternoon, after a week of difficulty, she shared that I had come to mind as she read Mark 11:20 from the CSB version, because of my tree analogy.

“Early in the morning, as they were passing by, they saw the fig tree withered from the roots up.” (emphasis added)

Several weeks later, I knew Fig Tree needed to be the name for this new blog I was anxious to start.

Symbolism of a Fig Tree

A fig tree can symbolize fertility, prosperity, abundance, and peace. It can also be associated with wisdom & knowledge; a quest for truth and inner spiritual growth.

In the Bible, it is commonly used to represent spiritual and physical wellness, often of Israel.

In the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve sewed together fig leaves to make a covering for themselves. Thus, acknowledging their conscienceness of sin & shame, and the human condition of guilt which calls for divine forgiveness and grace.

That’s a lot to symbolize in one little tree, but isn’t it powerful?