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 Recovering From Grief

     Our daughter rescued a little four foot fir tree last summer, that had gotten uprooted. She had been working in the ravine with my husband, while he bulldozed a road through our property. She brought it up to me. Most of the dirt had fallen off the roots. I didn't hold out much hope for it, but I dug a big hole for it in the hard hot earth near the house, and put a bunch of good topsoil in with it, giving lots of water until the autumn rains came.

     Like all small trees up here, it got snowed on in early November, and leaned over to the side. For four months, none of the young trees on the mountain get to stand up. They are pushed over by the snow, and held down. The mountain is covered with leaning pines and firs, that never recovered from the winters, and continued to grow askew. Several times in the next four months, I knocked the snow off the little tree's top branches, hoping it wouldn't end up permanently lopsided, like so many. When the snow finally melted off of it, in early March, the top was still leaning quite a bit.

     But as the sunny weeks went by, I saw it begin to straighten. It had been pushed toward the north, and so it began to slowly, ever so slowly, straighten up as it strained toward the life-giving sun. It went through some hard times, for a tree. But I am hoping to see new growth any time now.

     I am reminded of people who have been really "snowed under" with trials and heartaches. I have been like such a tree. Some people never recover, and remain bent and depressed, with no strength to straighten. But as years crawled by, I began to see good and happy things again. It was like the sun coming out, and I began to yearn and strain toward the light. I'm still leaning to the side a bit, but now I am asking God for strength to stand tall again. To be able to feel joy, and continue to give it as well. Recovering from a heartache is new growth, like the new green needles on the fir. New spiritual growth is always possible, if a person just leans toward the light that is God's strength and love.

* O, God though you have made me see troubles, many and bitter, You will restore my life again; and from the depths of the earth you will again bring me up. Psalms 71:20



© 2004 Rosemary Gwaltney