Storms

I was thinking about storms, since we are in the midst
of one. Yesterday the wind blew. I guess March is coming
in like a lion. Before it started though, I was walking around
and I saw just a few of our fruit trees with some blooms
but not too many just lots of buds.

Then later when I went out to feed the bees and water
the chickens and collect eggs, I found almost all of the trees
blooming. I was thinking about that and I thought,
the trees must need the wind to help them open the
buds so for the trees it is a good thing to have a storm.

I thought then if we have trials then it is a good thing
for us, because it makes us bloom? Right?

Then I started thinking about these two old oak trees
I saw one time while on a drive. We had stopped the car
and we had got out and were looking at something, then
I saw these two oak trees that someone had nailed
barb wire to, I touched the bark of both trees, one tree
was standing straight and tall and hardly had a dent where
the wire had grown the bark was starting to take it away.

The other oak tree was no longer standing tall and upright,
but was bending over the wire and becoming twisted and
bent. Part of the limbs were dying and it's bark was falling
off around the wire.

As I stood there looking at it I was struck by this thought.
I can be like these trees, but I must choose. I can let hard things
come into my life to make me stronger and better or
I can let trials turn me into this twisted, bent and crooked
tree letting the hard things kill me too.

I think that is how life is, to make that choice of allowing
trials to make us bloom or making us twisted. One of the things
I love are the evil queens in Snow White and Sleeping Beauty,
just because as I age, I identify with the Queens and not the
young girls. Nuts, but true. I think the evil queens are beautiful.

Don't you agree. As I thought about them though,
They may be beautiful on the outside, but on the inside
that are scary. I think if I go even deeper, they let
bitterness take over their lives and they became
evil. But after all they made a choice didn't they?

So to bring this back to God, I loved this quote:
"Through my deepest waters, hottest fires
and darkest valleys God has taught me the deepest
and the most eternal lessons." ( A Path Through Suffering,
Elisabeth Elliot.)
" You who have shown me great, and severe troubles,
shall revive me again, and bring me up again,
from the depths of the earth." (Psalm 71:20)
Have a great Saturday!