The Story of a Seed by Elizabeth Bethell (Theme: When I am Hopeful)

For weeks, possibly months, even years, I have believed in what I can become.

I was placed in what seemed to me the darkest and dampest of prisons.

I waited and waited for I don’t know what. I waited through

the damp,

the dark,

the cold,

the wet,

the frozen,

the thaw

until that moment when with the warmth of the unknown seeping in,

and with nothing more than a belief that now was the time and

in the rightness of what I was about to do …

I yielded,

I broke,

and gave up all that I had, knowing

that this end would be a beginning.

Who could have known

that the journey that started so deep in darkness,

that travelled without a glimpse of light,

would end with

such beauty,

such freedom.

This is hope.

Hope within

that enables us to believe in what we can’t see and continue until we can.

This is hope.

Hope without, in friends who, like gardeners, can see beyond the seed, see us through the darkness and can see what we can become.