Late nite rambling

I started a new book in the bath tonite...and I like it, and I know I will love it. Everything about the first few pages filled me with the hope and anticipation of a future not yet written. Not yet known. There is a profound peace in the possibility and boundless nature of the future. A peace and hope that doesn't always surface for us in our day-to-day existence. There is a soaring freedom that exists when we allow ourselves to dream and to imagine and to hope. Hope is a word that keeps coming up for me, and throughout my life it has been a recurring theme. I will not abandon hope. I will not start to play the refrain of "Closer My God To Thee" as if my ship were sinking. Even in times when I feel or fear that it is, I will not grant credence to such devastating and final a judgement. As long as I take another breath, and God grants me another sunrise--made even more resilient by the smiles of my daughters--I will not despair. I will ask for grace and forgiveness, and guidance as I navigate another day, another week, another month in which I can learn something, make a difference, be an instrument for good in the world. I like to lose myself in the minor worries and petty distractions of a life lived in a country and culture of indulgence and plenty--and woe is me when everything is not as easy as I would like! But at the end of it all--and in the face of all of the love and compassion, forgiveness and grace that is granted me daily by God and the interaction with those I have been blessed to love and be loved by in return--I am grateful, humbled, and in awe of the unconditional love I receive; from this world and the next.

It has been a hard week. A week of questions, frustrations, fears, and tears. And I love and at the same time am ashamed at the blessings I experience daily. I should be slapped in the face for my ingratitude, but I am embraced in loving arms instead. I don't understand this mystery, and I won't endeavor to explain it-- but I know that I am loved and that I am protected and that I am blessed--and as I pray my thanks, I pray also that I will remember and that I can ask daily for a strength beyond my own to make a difference bigger than me in the world around me.