My favorite childhood memories were made when my family lived on a small farm in Missouri. Running barefoot in the grass, climbing trees, reading books to our cow, eating blackberries right off the bush, chasing fireflies, sleeping on the porch in the summer… it was a storybook. I missed in terribly when we moved from that magical place. Truly, I wasn’t the same at all after that.

I wonder, though, if we hadn’t moved would I have always loved the little farm as much as I did then? What if I’d grown out of wanting to play outside and visiting our cow in the pasture? That would have been sad, too. Perhaps even more sad.

Throughout my life it seems many good things were abruptly stripped away. Each time I was resentful and angry. But, if I allow myself to step back and see the bigger picture, those things were always replaced with something better. I just had to realize it and learn to be thankful for every blessing even when it was disguised as a wallop.

When I first heard the phrase ‘there can be no light without dark’, I wanted to wail. Why? Why couldn’t life always be as I remembered it on the farm? Then a gentle voice in my soul told me.

Every seed is buried beneath a layer of dirt. Yet, every little seed knows that to grow into a beautiful, bountiful, flowering tree, it must first take time to sense the direction of the sun, break through the muck and reach for the heavens. For there is no darkness without light.