After posting yesterday, I went to bed with the feeling of "not enough." I was a big ball of "I want ..." I questioned whether God listened to, let alone answered, prayers. God responded.
I fell into a dream where I was standing on a bridge. On one end of the bridge was Life; on the other end was Death. I could choose to go in either direction; the only caveat being that my loved ones had to go the opposite way. To help me cope with their absence, God allowed me to take a few things from each one. Oddly, I was not distraught by this turn of events; instead I was focused. I was determined to get the best things from each person, so that I would almost feel like that person was there with me while I waited to see them again. When one of my sisters passed by, I grabbed her walk. From my brother, I held on to his amazing smell. And so it went; each person went by and I took from them something unique to them.
At the end of the line was Brendan. In his little arms was a big, heavy bag bursting with goodies. I looked at him with some sadness. "I can't take any of that stuff with me, Bren." "But, Mommy," he said, pulling the bag closer to me. "Look inside. Here is the smell of the pancakes we get at the diner when we have Brendan and Mommy time. Here is the sunset over the mountains behind our house when we sit together on the deck. Here is the feel of my hand in yours when we are walking down the street. Here we are picking string beans from our garden. In this one, we are making pizza. There are so many great things in here. Are you sure you can't take them?"
I awoke with the heavy sensation of sadness in my heart. Here I was, obsessing about relatively stupid things, when, in fact, if I were to die tomorrow, none of it would matter. Brendan wouldn't care that I bought him the most expensive uniform shirts; he would remember my laugh, my hugs, our bedtime stories or cuddling in the morning. He would think of me when he went to the park and even when he cleaned his room. Not to say that money isn't important, it obviously is, but it's the intangibles that make for true happiness.
1 comment:
What are you on? This is very deep. Do you remember when I told you to think of everyday as though it was the last one you were going to live? When you start looking at life from those glasses instead of the poop-ones, life is wonderful and we start to realize how blessed we really are. When you start to obsess, just take time to look at how nature works. How the sun rises every morning. How ducks take walks with their ducklings in the morning. Look at the clock how you don't see the hand moving yet it is moving and time goes on. So let enjoy every second of God giving day and let God take care of the rest.
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