Oh, the joy of life when all is good and well.

The bitterness not tasted and instead

only the sweetness of the flower of life.

Expected it can be that all of life’s journey will be this way -

overflowing with laughter and love

and all the rightness in one’s world that could ever be.

Yet then, south turns to north and the winds swirl you away,

your direction is lost, and nothing is there to see

of what you once felt of the times of your life.

Then it is often when gratefulness ceases in one’s way.

Often found is only a disturbed view of this journey of yours.

What then of gratitude?

Might instead one find that within the fullness of life it is not

just the moments of bliss that count,

but also, the ones that come your way

of breaking you down into pieces you didn’t know you had.

Crumbled into dust.

Broken, lying in your own way.

What to make of what is to come?

And then with new eyes in this time of great light

you begin to see that in the breaking down

comes the seed of new birth in your way.

Struggling to come to terms with your plight,

growing out of the experience over time,

to one day see how the new day of dawn,

the joys that come again,

were there all along, growing out

of and the darkness of those times.

Now, it begins, life-long looking back,

grateful for all that was.”

The LightKeepers/Carolyn Hass Zaiser