The Currant Bush

So my visiting teacher Monday (not knowing that I was moving at the time) presented me with this story. TOTALLY inspired to share this with me. It is the story of the currant bush by Hugh B. Brown.

He states: "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 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. 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. 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.’ ”


I feel like I am the currant bush right now. I feel like I am asking my Heavenly Father why. How could you make me move to Utah? I am making so much of myself here in Idaho Falls. I have grown so much and I have so many friends. I want to make my life in Idaho Falls like my other friends are, but now you want me to move?


But I have the faith that my Heavenly Father is my gardener and that His plan for me is not like that of my friends. He wants me to be KATY HALL! He has a separate plan for me. And even though I feel like I am being cut down to an ugly old stump and having everything taken away from me. I know that some day later in life when I am so happy down in Utah, I will be able to look to the Heavens, and like the currant bush 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!"