OF STORMS & GROWTH

My yard looks like winter.  Bare trees and mud, twigs and branches, fallen leaves and dead grass.

My life also looks like winter.  Extended unemployment, financial stress, issues that are inevitable when six individuals share a life and roof, personal struggles for various family members, and buckets of tears.

However, my yard is also showing signs of spring, evidence of growth and an upcoming season that is prettier than the one we're in right now.

My life, too, is showing signs of a better season ahead, some things that have already changed for the better and little slivers of hope for some of the things that continue to be difficult.

Between the way my yard looks these days, what's going on in my personal life, and today being the 22nd anniversary of my mom's death, I thought this would be the perfect time to post a poem of my mom's. She wrote it in 1977 and I love it, especially the last two lines.


VIEW I

A storm came through our garden once;
     it shred and broke and tore,
Til all that lay within its path
     was shaken o'er and o'er

Then firmly called the sun for quiet;
     it shushed the wind and held the rain;
Then gently wrapped the fraught creation
     with warm and healing arms again

After days of loving comfort,
     timid shoots of green peeked through,
And gentle colors shyly opened,
     promise of a deeper hue

When seasons changed, a passerby
     beheld a two-faced view ---
Of rain-thrashed trees and battered shrubs,
     yet also growth, alive and new


VIEW II

The Husbandman has placed His servants
     within a garden, precious, rare
To labor, pray, rejoice, and weep
     o'er every branch he's planted there.

Our Father also knew before
     that violent, unrelenting rains,
Sweeping o'er his precious vineyard
     would bring wreckage, sorrow, pain

But far beyond, the Keeper knew
     the storm would more than havoc sow;
For rains that plunder stiffened branches
     cause the yielding ones to grow.

~ Barbara Perkins