with love to all...

It was such a beautiful sunny

Autumn crisp day.

I decided to take my favourite walk

to see my favourite tree.

One of my dear friends was in

a lot of heartache this week.

I've been thinking about various topics,

of how we women have often had to be strong

for a very long time.

Sometimes we don't know why.

Why we are alone or perhaps

why we have to be our own Mother

or why life has to have a series of setbacks and grief.

Our paths often do not seem very clear

and often strewn with sadness and many tears.

The leaves fall

winter comes

and the seeds never seem

to get rooted in the ground.

We feel alone, cold, barren and

without hope for better.

*

As I was walking I thought of Mother Alexandra

and a prayer that I read written by her.

(I must get the prayer book it is in one day).

It was about humility and being a Mother;

about carrying other's pain as well as one's own.

(I paraphrase of course).

Somehow I have to trust that the personal devastation

that we all go through,

those dark valleys,

can be used to not only plan the seed deep inside us

but help us like wind helps a tree grow strong.

For me part of the meaning of suffering

is to become a strong tree.

Strong in Christ.

Strong through the Saint's help.

Strong because in the Saints we have

Protectors, Mothers, Fathers;

even in their humility,

brothers and sisters.

And with this help,

we can become the Mothers (or Fathers)

that can help nurture others.

Even give what we ourselves may not have been given,

save directly in Christ and the Saints.

Somehow we can become part of Christ's body

and a tree to protect others

while we are in Christ,

in His embrace and will.

Christ died on the Cross in obedience to

the will of the Father.

We are safest in God's will.

So we must learn to not fear

to have hope

and that we truly are sheltered by Christ,

like a small tree in a Mountain's crevice,

shielded in the midst of great storms.