The Beautiful Desert
By Connie Hubble
--
I carry my baby girl on my back,
through dormant vineyards of Napa Valley;
the greenness of the hills becomes my favorite color.
Yellow mustard thriving
between the rows of sleeping vines,
sings of spring, birth, renewal, a fresh start.
I watch nimbus clouds part,
Allowing the sunshine to kiss the earth,
warm my face, and gently heat life awake.
The miracle I cling to stirs.
She is green. New to this earth.
How I long to protect her from the desert.
Then I remember the desert
And the answers to my prayers.
The desert has its own kind of beauty.
There I learned to love the cactus bloom
fighting against all odds for life,
displaying a strength to emulate.
I held on too long to failed dreams;
the sting of the Mojave made me ill.
Life was parched out of me.
Only by living in the arid terrain,
brown, barren, and burdensome,
Did I learn to rely on my Savior’s strength.
Once delivered from the desert
I recognized happiness by what it was not.
I understood that without the trial,
victory would be meaningless.
The desert gave birth to my senses,
and led me down the path to my daughter.
No, I realize, I would never deprive
My sweet child of the desert.
I know she will need the brown and the barren,
the dry and the parched,
before she will ever realize
how alive the green can be.
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"For it must needs be, that there is an opposition in all things. If not so ... righteousness could not be brought to pass, neither wickedness, neither holiness nor misery, neither good nor bad. Wherefore, all things must needs be a compound in one; wherefore, if it should be one body it must needs remain as dead, having no life neither death, nor corruption nor incorruption, happiness nor misery, neither sense nor insensibility."
