Been sitting on the porch and pondering on this Saturday morning. The song birds have been flitting around the feeders and singing happily. The wind chimes have played melodious loud symphonies when the wind rattled their pipes. I’ve been sitting in the swing and gazing up at the melancholy sky, a myriad of grays and whites. You think an overcast sky doesn’t deserve a second look but with close inspection you can see all the colors swirled together make a beautiful subdued sky canopy.

I was looking at the sky when the sun burst through the clouds and the blue sky canvas greeted the day with a smile of azure. So pretty with the sun bleached clouds floating across the horizon, taking on different animal shapes. Soon the clouds joined hands and the sky became a melancholy canvas again, but still very beautiful in my mind.

I walked Penelope down the street, over the oak root broken sidewalk maze, and stood under an old oak tree under a shower of brown and yellow leaves. The leaves rained down silently from the branches, one leaf striking me on the nose. Penelope just looked up, fascinated with watching the leaves floating around us.

I’ve picked up several acorns in my yard and the top of the acorns, under their caps, are bright yellow. Never noticed that color on the acorn before. Maybe they fell off too early. The blue jays were back today picking acorns off the oak branches and hoarding them away. The resident hoot owl made a stop in the oak tree next door and stoically sat on a limb while a mockingbird dive bombed him for several minutes. The owl just sat there quietly while the mockingbird pecked him on the back. The hoot owl looked ferocious. Guess the mockingbird warrior was carrying out his bombing mission.

Got caught up in college football and missed the sun laying her head down at dusk and kissing the night hello. I did go out on the porch and look for the man in the moon but only saw a few stars pinned on the dark purple sky canvas. The man in the moon hasn’t waked up at my house the past few days.

I was thinking about the beauty of the sun when it burst through the clouds and how the sun’s warmth feels so good on our skin. Even when we can’t see the sun we know it’s there. An overcast sky is gloomy in its colors, evokes melancholy feelings, till a little ray of sun breaks through and lights up the day. A genuine smile can break through someone’s overcast day, too.

We can have overcast skies in our lives, days where we stumble on the path of what we feel is the hopeless monotony of our world. The clouds in our lives cover the sun during the day and hide the stars at night. There are breaks in our day sometimes where we catch a fleeting glimpse of blue sky. Walt Whitman said, “Keep your face always toward the sunshine — and shadows will be all behind you.”

We can make our own sunshine to break through the clouds that shadow us. Our sense of pessimism or optimism govern our day’s outcome. A good dose of optimism can turn things around in a hurry. We don’t have to walk in the darkness. We can seek the sunshine. God can take our dark clouds away and bring some sunshine back in our lives.

When our daughter died someone told me, “Everything happens for a reason.” Well, I searched for years and doubted my faith looking for that reason. It was an accident that she ran off the road. God did not push the car off the road. I don’t think everything happens for a reason but the way we respond to adversity can determine whether our remaining days will become sunny or stay cloudy. We make a conscious decision to see the sun or to see the clouds.

Our lives are full of trials but with God’s love we can find comfort and peace and the warmth of healing sunshine.

“Be noble like the sun; let even those who resent you for shinning benefit from your warmth,” — Mashona Dhliwwayo.