Five Minute Friday: Growing.............

Today I'm linking up to Lisa-Jo aka the gypsy mama, who chooses a topic every Friday and writes for five minutes.

Only five minutes

And the rule is that whatever you write about in that five minutes is what you posts. No editing your thoughts. Today, her topic choice is "growing....."

Ready. Set. Go......

I have always thought that the sunshine brings growth. After all, that is when we are the most happy when things are going our way and we are not feeling heavy by burdens and worries. Even in the gardens this year as I watched early in the summer, the sunshine seemed to be aiding in all my flowers and vegetable to grow and reach skyward. Sunshine - happy times. However, after a summer full of sunshine, beating all that happiness and warmth down on my gardens, they did not thrive. I lost so many of my beautiful flowers that had an over abundance of sunshine and there was no growth at all. Funny, the plants reached a certain point, and they completely stopped growing..

And then after over 110 days...it rained. And you know what happened? For the first time in about three months, there was new growth in my garden. The flowers that had all but given up on growing  seemed to have new life brought to them and new growth and flowers sprung forth. Hope and beauty.

I thought of something I have never thought of before as I saw the prompt this morning from Lisa. We seem to be the most joyful when the sun is shining bright in our lives, when there is no grief or sadness. Of course, that is true, we are and I for one am always thankful for the sunshine times in my life. But I have learned in the deep part of our sorrow and pain during the rainy times that move into our lives, is when true growth will happen. During the downpour of rain, when you grieve for those you are losing, when you feel your darkest days, even if you are not aware of it, you are growing within yourself. Real growth does not come from the sunshine, but the rain.

I suppose the lesson in this for me is to be joyful during the rain, even if it is not easy to do because I am growing into a place that I can enjoy the sunshine all that much more. stop.