A Gift:

The boxes of hope offered by Our Lady of Perpetual Suffering reminded me of a poem by Mary Oliver. In the poem, she writes how someone she once loved gave her a box of darkness. Years later, she understood it was a gift:

The Uses of Sorrow
(In my sleep I dreamed this poem)

Someone I loved once gave me
a box full of darkness.

It took me years to understand

that this, too, was a gift.