A Cracked Vase

A doctor named Rachel Remen tells a true story about a handsome, young football player who loses the feeling of love that light brings.
His life had been good, with friends and an athletic body.
Then he got cancer in his leg.
His leg had to be cut off above the knee.
Playing football and receiving fame were now things of the past.
He grew angry, making his life dark and confusing.
It was hard for him to know who he was.

Doctor Remen asked this young man to draw what his body looked like.
He drew a simple sketch of a vase.
Then he took a thick, black crayon and drew a deep crack down the vase.
It was clear that he believed his body was like a broken vase that could never be made useful again.
This was not really true.
They made him an artificial leg so he could walk.
But his heart felt so dark that his body wouldn't heal.

Then he talked to some people who had problems like his own.
He understood their feelings.
He started to help other people feel better.
A light came into his own heart, and he started to heal.

He met a young lady with similar problems.
Her heart was filled with shadows.
When he entered her hospital room for the first time, she refused to look at him and lay in bed with her eyes closed.
He tried everything he knew to reach her.
He played the radio, he told jokes, and finally he took off his artificial leg and let it drop to the floor.
Startled, she opened her eyes and saw him for the first time as began to hop around the room, snapping his fingers in time to the music.
She burst out laughing and said, "If you can dance, maybe I can sing."
They became friends.
They shared their fears and helped each other feel hopeful.

In the young man's last visit with the doctor, he looked at his old drawing of the vase with the crack in it and said, "That picture of me is not finished."
Taking a yellow crayon, he drew lines going from the crack to the edges of the paper.
He put his finger on the ugly black crack and said, "This is where the light comes through."
I believe he meant that dark and difficult experiences help us to feel the light from Heavenly Father's love.

Gayle M. Clegg -The Light of His Love- Special Satellite Broadcast for Children 2003

Until you next see these words;
I'll be watching the leaves.
Enjoy the day!

-Sarnic Dirchi

The Dream

My parents were remodeling their home. Mom was trying to create a third bedroom where there had only been two before. She wanted there to be three bedrooms there, for each kid. (Somehow the parents bedroom was added into the mix...so four bedrooms?) The first we all saw of the changes were the switch in windows. There were more windows then there had been before. We came into the rooms....and they were small. Like walk in closet size. There was basically room for the bed and that was it. It halfway looked like the rooms in a cruise ship. We kids went in trying to make the best of it. The beds were elevated, so we needed a ladder to climb up (which meant there was storage below) and the shelves...were odd, it was a crisscross pattern above the bed. My mom was seriously disappointed, she wanted to make everything better...and it seemed like it had only gotten worse. She tried to see if they could expand out the rooms a couple of inches, but that would move the building off the current foundation. She also was questioning the builder's tastes as they decided to have the microwave above the bed, above our heads when we were sleeping, which seemed....dangerous....

Then the unholy tones of daylight pulled me away...
and I became myself again. :)

-S.N.D