The Currant Bush

I am having a hard time. I feel constantly completely exhausted, frustrated, overwhelmed and alone. I can't wait to feel like my body is normal again. I can't wait for Annalise to not run away in the street, grab everything off the shelf at the grocery store, make a giant messy disaster of every room in the house, or actually listen to one thing I tell her. I can't wait to someday sleep 8 hours straight with no one bothering me. I feel used up and like I have nowhere to turn. The last few days have been particularly rough. This morning when I started crying before I even got out of bed, Annalise knew to run and get the toilet paper so I could wipe my eyes.

Then I read this talk by Elder Hugh B. Brown and it spoke to me of The Bigger Picture. And I felt a little better.

"...I was living up in Canada. I had purchased a farm. It was run-down. I went out one morning and saw a currant bush. It had grown up over six feet high. It was going all to wood. There were no blossoms and no currants. I was raised on a fruit farm in Salt Lake before we went to Canada, and I knew what ought to happen to that currant bush. So I got some pruning shears and went after it, and I cut it down, and pruned it, and clipped it back until there was nothing left but a little clump of stumps. It was just coming daylight, and I thought I saw on top of each of these little stumps what appeared to be a tear, and I thought the currant bush was crying. I was kind of simpleminded (and I haven’t entirely gotten over it), and I looked at it, and smiled, and said, “What are you crying about?” You know, I thought I heard that currant bush talk. And I thought I heard it say this: “How could you do this to me? I was making such wonderful growth. I was almost as big as the shade tree and the fruit tree that are inside the fence, and now you have cut me down. Every plant in the garden will look down on me, because I didn’t make what I should have made. How could you do this to me? I thought you were the gardener here.” That’s what I thought I heard the currant bush say, and I thought it so much that I answered. I said, “Look, little currant bush, I am the gardener here, and I know what I want you to be. I didn’t intend you to be a fruit tree or a shade tree. I want you to be a currant bush, and some day, little currant bush, when you are laden with fruit, you are going to say, ‘Thank you, Mr. Gardener, for loving me enough to cut me down, for caring enough about me to hurt me. Thank you, Mr. Gardener.’”