Ravaged by Storms

 Sorrow prepares you for joy.  It violently sweeps everything out of your house, so that new joy can find space to enter.  It shakes the yellow leaves from the bough of your heart, so that fresh, green leaves can grow in their place.  It pulls up rotten roots, so that new roots hidden beneath have room to grow.  Whatever sorrow shakes from your heart, far better things will take their place –    Rumi

I believe in this quote from Rumi the 13th-century Persian poet and Sufi mystic.  I believe as it helps me face my challenges head on, it helps me survive obstacles that can sometimes feel insurmountable.  I don’t welcome challenges but I accept them, I acknowledge them and let them sit with me until they pass through.  Only then can I see and feel what they have left in their wake, only then can I begin to understand them and build from them.   I think of myself as a tree ravaged by the winter storms, uncovered and naked only to be clothed again in spring as I begin again with the warmth of a new day.