Love Story

My baby has a girlfriend. He's 10. Until a year ago he still wanted to marry me when he grew up. I was his one and only true love. Then last school year he fell in 'love' with a little girl in his class. She was a sweetie pie, but he never told her how he felt and summer break cooled his adoration.
So this year school hadn't been in session for a week when he came home and informed me that Hannah had 'asked him out'. (What does it even mean when 10 year olds 'go out'?) I remembered a young lady named Hannah from his class last year, in fact I have a delightful little love letter from a Hannah to Jack that I will save forever in my memory box. "Yes" Jack tells me, "It's that Hannah". Two days later Jack asked his daddy if he could cut a Zinnia from the garden and take it to school for her. Then shortly after that he came home with a necklace she had given him.
I thought their little romance was the sweetest thing I'd ever seen. And that was even before I saw her picture.

Because when I did, I realized Hannah looks kind of like me. She has a beautiful smile that goes all the way to her eyes. She's cute, smart and nice . She is also short and a little round. And my boy, he gets all soft and gooey when he talks about her. The other day when I mentioned that she was not a tiny little thing like some of the young ladies in his class, he said to me, in the smiling, breathless way love often expresses itself, "And Mom, she has fat cheeks, too", squeezing his own cheeks in example.

And while I have loved him all along, somehow in that moment, I fell even more in love with this boy of mine. You see, he does not care; he doesn't care that she is chubbier than the girls his friends are 'going out' with; he thinks she is beautiful because she is chubby, not in spite it. And he doesn’t care what anyone thinks about it. He has a mind and heart of his own. What more could a momma ask for?

Trials

Sometimes life seems to gang up on a person. I have seen it often in the lives of friends and family. I have watched while they bent under the weight of the burdens life piled on them. I have loved them, sympathized with them, offered support when I felt I could help and given assistance when asked. But I have always felt blessed, (and if I'm honest, a tiny bit special), that I had not been so burdened myself.

I could not offer true empathy, because I had somehow made it to 38 years old without any real suffering in my own life. Oh, I had your run-of-the-mill obstacles thrown in my path from time to time. Heartaches and losses, some of them even seemed huge, when they were happening. But genuine, first hand sorrow and pain, I'd been spared.

Until August of last year. That's when my friend and father called to tell me he had cancer of the esophagus. One hundred and seventy-two days later he was gone.

Empathy comes easier now... it's the only thing that does.

Jubilation

Small doses. That's how it usually comes. In very small doses. But, oh, when it does come...so awesome. Like this tiny beauty. I met her the other day in the rose garden my husband lovingly tends. She was tucked in the lower petals of a gorgeous 'Double Delight', waiting. And I, not an arachnophobe, but certainly not a big fan, was smitten. I experienced a rejoicing in my spirit. And that joy, small as it was, was enough. Why you ask? Why should anyone rejoice in the discovery of a spider. I'm not sure I can explain, but I do want to try.

Have you ever been so broke, in financial straights so dismal, that finding a $10 bill in the old coat you put away for the summer feels like a windfall, like a genuine miracle? Have you ever found yourself so utterly alone, so hopelessly lonely, that a cheerful 'hello' from the mailman feels like a rope to a drowning man?

That spider is my $10 rope. She is a reminder, a much needed and just-in-time reminder, that I am not forgotten by the Him. That He still has His hand on me. Because I know a God who created such an amazing creature, perfect in her purpose, fierce in her survival, could not, would not, have done less for me. And that knowing brings joy.

A New Day

I thought I would start with something like a mission statement, which is what this poem is to me. And though it was written several years ago, it never loses it's power to remind me that each day is a new chance to become who I want to be.

Re-Raveling Me

I am undone.
I have been unraveling for some time.
But this morning
I felt the last stitch let go.
Leaving me holding one end
Of the string-that-is-me,
The other end trailing off behind.

The string is intact,
Only the design was flawed.

So, first thing tomorrow,
I will begin, again.
Remaking myself, a stitch at a time,
Recycling what lies behind me,
Into what lies before me,
Until I reach the opposite end,
Held gently in the hand of God