Piercing the Surface

There is a deeper gratitude that I am asked to feel.
  It transcends thankfulness for that which I desired.
  Its tendrils penetrate the dark, musty soil of my being.
  In that rich, thick loam rest the seeds of my ascendance.
  
My transgressions, my heart-wrenching anguish, my dolor,
  the ones who summoned demons of anger and enmity in me,
  all the painful, gruesome, ghastly moments I have experienced,
  the dark, restless, never-happy, ungrateful, uncompromising self...

ALL these were gifts, gifts given with the deepest of love, to me.
  The sweet irony of life, the exquisite and remarkable stories I live.
  The pristine rose bloom does not magically appear to grace this world.
  It is born in that dank, wet, dark soil, is nourished and protected therein.

So too, our lives.

My gratitude emerges from a realization that through the trials,
  I have been offered innumerable opportunities to learn and grow,
  to experience Divine grace, to see beyond the material to the eternal,
  to witness miracles in everyday life, to find the wisdom I seek inside me.
  
So too, each of us.

So too, all of us.