Mary O’Malley – In a few days, we will be celebrating the winter solstice, the shortest day and longest night of the year. Even though we will begin experiencing increasingly more daylight after December 21st, it can feel like the darkness on our planet is intensifying and the light diminishing. This can evoke fear if we don’t understand the fertility of the dark.
A way to get straight to the truth that darkness may not be something to be afraid of is to look at manure! Here is a substance that we deem has a high ‘yuck ‘factor and doesn’t smell so good. And yet when you till it into the earth, it grows beautiful flowers.
The same is true in our lives. The dark times, the times when the challenges feel unmeetable, are not here because you have done something wrong or God fell asleep on the job. Your challenges may feel like sh*t, but they are really fertilizer for your growth. Just as deep in the darkness of the earth are diamonds, rubies and emeralds, your darkest challenges come with gems of truth hidden within them.
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