A welcome respite...

The day is grey.  Overcast, pale grey, dull skyline. Oh, but how beautiful!  My spirit rises as the temperature cools.  A few leaves float in a zigzag path to their home on the parched thin blades of grass outside my backdoor.  I hardly notice the pain that seems to encompass my body...the constant ringing in my ears...my cloudy vision.

The television is playing an angst-ridden movie on motherhood in a big city.  My anxiety level is heightened, but I'm glued in place.  Unable to turn it off as I identify with the craziness of the main character having a meltdown on her way driving out of town, leaving her family behind.  A crisis.  As she screams a conversation over the cell phone with her husband relaying her plans, she whips the car back around at a harried pace as her youngest son is choking on a lollipop.

When she gets home, the child is fine.  She and her husband have a heart to heart...and he ends up asking:  "What would be a better life than you have right now?"  She's lost her voice, herself, through sacrifices and compromises she's made for her marriage, her children, her place in the neighborhood....He also asks:  "What do you really think?  Feel? ....what makes you want to live a life of passion, no matter how many socks you may have to pick up?"

Well, my only son is in his junior year in college.  Somehow, I haven't managed to find my joy for living every day with the expression of passion and eagerness.  But, gradually....so gradually....I eke my way out of my dark cavernous void of a mid-life crisis...

There are so many blessings in the everyday things....I need to focus on them.  I need to see with thankful eyes the beautiful and the mundane and feel gratitude and....joy!  Every day.