Borrowed thought

I received an email that I had never seen before. Imagine that.....it was all new. I am not sure how much of it is really "legend" but the end of it just hit me today. I am not grumpy, sad,frustrated or specifically struggling with any one thing. I immediately thought about some of my friends and family. So, instead of forwarding it to everyone and risking the chance that there is someone in another far off distance galaxy that needs to read this.......I am going to put part of it here. (And as an Eng. teacher, I put quotes around it because I did not write it) Enjoy

The legend of the Cherokee Indian youth's rite of passage:

"His father takes him into the forest, blindfolds him and leaves him alone. He is required to sit on a stump the whole night and not remove the blindfold until the rays of the morning sun shine through it.
Once he survives the night, he is a MAN.
He cannot tell the other boys of this experience because each lad must come into manhood on his own.

The boy is naturally terrified. He can hear all kinds of noises. Wild beasts must surely be all around him. Maybe even some human might do him harm. The wind blew the grass and earth, and shook his stump, but he sat stoically, never removing the blindfold.

It would be the only way he could become a man!

Finally, after a horrific night, the sun appeared and he removed his blindfold.
It was then that he discovered his father sitting on the stump next to him.
He had been at watch the entire night, protecting his son from harm.

We, too, are never alone.
Even when we don't know it, our Heavenly Father is watching over us, sitting on the stump beside us."

My mother-in-law has 2 big tree stumps in her yard. I won't look at either the same any more.