I wanted to share these two great poems that have inspired and encouraged me to be better.  Keeping perspective during difficult times is so important, because it directly influences the way we respond.  How we view trials often determines how we use them.  We can use our challenges to learn and grow, or to shrink and shrivel.  We have the power to choose… to become bitter or to become better.  You and I have seen the results of both of those choices.  Decide today that you will rise above life’s challenges by choosing to grow stronger and wiser because of them.

Let these two poems reach you, teach you and touch you.  Enjoy and share!

Good Timber

by Douglas Malloch

The tree that never had to fight
For sun and sky and air and light,
But stood out in the open plain
And always got its share of rain,
Never became a forest king
But lived and died a scrubby thing.

The man who never had to toil
To gain and farm his patch of soil,
Who never had to win his share
Of sun and sky and light and air,
Never became a manly man
But lived and died as he began.

Good timber does not grow with ease:
The stronger wind, the stronger trees;
The further sky, the greater length;
The more the storm, the more the strength.
By sun and cold, by rain and snow,
In trees and men good timbers grow.

Where thickest lies the forest growth,
We find the patriarchs of both.
And they hold counsel with the stars
Whose broken branches show the scars
Of many winds and much of strife.
This is the common law of life.