Hard, Unwanted Branches

     Growing branches...?  My cousin's husband died on July 3.  He had been diagnosed with cancer in February.  Our family gathered for the funeral and I felt like a self absorbed idiot!!

     I started this blog because I retired and needed to grow "new branches" due to that change in my life. What a whimp I am! My change was an easy, happy one.  What about people who have catastrophic change thrust upon them? What about the branches they are forced to grow; branches they never wanted? 

     When I write, I sit in our office looking out onto the back yard filled with trees, towering pines, delicate dogwoods, and tenacious sweetgums.  They shade our yard and every shrub or flower I have planted beneath them depends on this shade. When particularly nasty thunderstorms blow through, I always fret that lightning or wind will take out some of the trees changing the complexion of the whole yard and endangering every plant in it.

     How similar to the life of a family stricken by disease, death, divorce, or any other disaster, forcing upon them changes in the whole complexion of their lives.  I want to acknowledge families and individuals who grow new branches under the direst of circumstances.  Thank you for setting examples of courage and resilience!  Thank you for showing us how it is done and thereby giving us hope for when it is our turn.

Love ya'll, 

Shelli

       Come, ye disconsolate, where'er you languish,

 Come at the shrine of God fervently kneel;

                             Here bring your wounded hearts, here tell your anguish—

           Earth has no sorrow that Heaven  cannot  heal.

                                                        

                                                      ~ Thomas Moore, c.1813, published in Sacred Songs, 1816