Then, one morning, after a stormy night, I woke to sound of a bird singing from a branch outside my window, and I opened my eyes to see the sun rising into a clear, blue sky from a horizon drenched in gold. It startled me. And all at once I realized it had been there all along, this clarity, this light, just beyond the clouds.

From the time I was a child, nature has been my teacher. I grew up on the shores of the vast Saginaw Bay in Michigan, and one of the first lessons I learned was the one the waves taught me. Life has a rhythm, a constant washing in of waves. Sometimes they’re slow and gentle. Sometimes they rage and crash against the shore. But it’s always a dance, always in motion. And I was like the shore, a partner in the dance, responding the rhythms and moods of the waves, whatever they might be, harmonizing with them, and welcoming them, for they always brought gifts.

The midweek sunrise reminded me of that again. Storms end. Above the clouds, the sky is clear and sparkling with light.

Like everybody else, I fall prey to fighting against the clouds that engulf us from time to time. I forget that they have a purpose. Their darkness pulls us into ourselves, to experience the darkness within, to find the judgments and pain that are obstacles to our joy so that we may understand and release them.

That’s the key to freeing yourself from negativity’s oppression. You have to accept that it comes to you with gifts, to sit down with it and ask it what it has come to show you, what it needs from you, what it is asking you to see and understand.

On the morning when the sun returned to my life, I looked back on the clouds that were disappearing into the night to see what gifts they had left behind. Where had my thoughts been focused while they were oppressing me? What was it they wanted me to see and understand?

I had, they told me, been battling against, instead of reaching for.

Oh.

That was quite true.

I thanked them, and sheepishly smiled, glad for the reminder, rolling my eyes over the fact that this was a lesson I seemed to need to revisit again and again and again. Then I laughed. Such is the life of a joy-warrior.

But at least, for this beautiful morning, I was seeing the sunlight once more, and breathing in the springtime’s fresh air. I would take this day, I vowed, to be joyful, and grateful, and glad, and to share its light with kindness and a smile for whomever it brought my way.

Today, that’s you. And I look into your eyes and tell you, “Life is good.” Trust that, No matter what.