Organic Confetti

Saturday morning. Too much to do in one day. Stress. Confusion as to where to begin. Hurricane Fay has brought cool breezes to north Georgia. It feels like October in August. We don’t get much of that around here. Where to begin? Clean? Grade papers? Wash the dogs? Work on my graduate classes? Deep breath……………………………….Okay, Natural solution? A cup of coffee on my screen porch. Just for a few minutes and I’ll be off like that Jamaican guy who won all the gold medals.

As I sat there enjoying the breeze and talking to God, a most wonderful thing happened. A gift of bright yellow fluttered and danced for me as if it had been choreographed. Beautiful. I pondered the glory of one simple object and decided that this little piece of organic confetti had done more to calm my spirit than Dr. Phil and Oprah could ever hope for. It’s still Saturday morning and I still have too much to do, but I experienced true beauty today and that is far more important than clean dogs or graded papers.

Boxes

When I have a hurtful issue to deal with that can’t be solved immediately, I put it in a box, label it, and store it in a little closet on the left side of my brain. This filing system works great most of the time. My friends wonder at my ability to take painful situations and pack them away until a betteolicr time arrives to deal with them. This all started many years ago when I was the teenage daughter of an alcoholic father. It just wasn’t convenient to deal with the sight of my mother dragging him back inside after he had fallen drunk on the driveway. I guess my habit of burying emotions followed me into adulthood. Yesterday, when I was opening the door of the closet to add something to the husband box, there must have been too much crammed in there. I tried to block the descent, but the weight was more than I could bear. Tumbling on top of me, the boxes fell until I was crushed under their weight. Just great. That’s gonna take a lot of work to fix. I don’t have time to deal with this mess. I wonder if God would be willing to clean it all up? Wait, He’s calling…hold on I’ll be right back.

Well, He’s willing to help me if I will trust him to do whatever He wants with the boxes. but can I give anyone total control of all my stuff? I will absolutely give Him the first box he asked for. It is labeled in all caps; WORRY. The rest can stay on the floor for awhile. I don’t feel like cleaning up right now anyway. Hey, there’s the one he wants, way back there under the husband box, and right next to the daughter box. It must be on the bottom because it’s so stinkin’ big.

Now, It Is Him

It never occurred to me that a child of mine would become an inspiration to me. When he was a baby, I didn’t consider that one day he would be a spiritual influence. I think one of the greatest joys of my life so far is realizing that one of my children is actually inspiring me to greatness not vice versa.

I must be old now. How did that happen? Just yesterday, it was me who was itching to leave home. It was me who had notebooks full of dreams. Now, It is him. It is a 3lb.12oz. preemie. It is an infant who barely survived two heart surgeries. It is a 5 year old boy who struggled to learn to read when his twin brother made it look easy. It is a little boy who wore camo pants, a flannel shirt, and cowboy boots everywhere he went for years. It is a boy with braces and a puca shell necklace at the 8th grade dance. It is the boy who had his first kiss in a cul-de-sac with the girl next door. It is the teenager who accepted his limitations in sports because of his heart issues. It is the young man who made friends easily and smiled big. It is the young man who worked hard in honors classes even though his ADD made it harder for him. It is the young man who proudly walked down the aisle in cap and gown. It is the college student trudging through core classes. It is the young man who left for foreign soil and came home a man. It is the long haired, free spirit, lover of life that I know and dance with. It is my son, my brother in Christ, my inspiration.