Better

Sitting at the end of an incredibly long day that followed another long day (that came after a few other long days) I find myself sitting in a place of peace.

My leg still isn’t healed.

I’m still quarantined at home.

I am still a walking *cough* wheeling, talking Petri dish so still not able to work.

And today I had to handle snow on top of a nice layer of ice on my car… by myself… with one leg… and all so I could spend 7 hours going to appointment after appointment. It isn’t that I’m supposed to be doing all these things on my own, it’s that I have no choice but to stand on my sloped, snow and ice covered driveway on one leg alone to scrape my car and no choice but to spend 7 hours going to appointment after appointment because my husband cannot be bothered… (He also cannot be bothered to read my writing.)

Yet here I sit by my fire in peace.

 

Early today while I was driving hither and thither I had a new playlist (of powerful girl ballads) going in the car and a song I had forgotten played:

“Stand In the Rain” by Superchick

Now that I think about it, it must have been floating around somewhere in my subconscious because I’m pretty sure I said something to someone in the last few days about standing in the rain or the storm.

Probably.

Seems too familiar a phrase today to just be a coincidence.

In any case, this song played and I was immediately completely inside my head, driving on autopilot, engrossed in my emotions, and contemplating the choices before me in all the facets of my current life’s situation. Looking toward an uncertain future it is easy to give into a hopelessness that accepts defeat or an unworthy status quo. It’s easy as well to try to find specific certainties to run toward, the flaw of course being that nothing in life is certain.

And then a friend who ALWAYS seems to know all the things sent me a beautiful and perfect quote for the moment I was sitting in:

Mmmmm. Yeah. All of that!

It took me a few minutes to be able to respond because it was that poignant.

I could just be angry about all the things going wrong and I don’t think anyone would blame me. It’s been a lot!

It feels as though every negative bit is a brick……and even now as I sit here writing there’s someone out there actively choosing to add more bricks to my load. One. By. One.

 

I could choose to go down a dark path with all of these bricks.

I could start chucking them at the heads of some very deserving people. If you all knew all the stories, you wouldn’t blame me. In fact you’d probably want to chuck a few yourself!

I could collapse under the immense weight I carry and give up. Only God knows how much it is I’m loaded down with and only He knows how heavily it weighs on my soul. But if He gave it to me than He must know I’m capable of bearing it, which means He must think I’m a badass.

I could put them down and try to leave them on the side of the road, but the truth is that as much as I despise every brick, each one has been given to me for a purpose.

With all these damn bricks, I could be wrathful and bitter. But that would not serve me any more than dropping the bricks, collapsing under them, or throttling well deserving toads with them would.

 

The only valid option, then, is to take the path laid out before me with my load of bricks. It doesn’t feel like it now, and it may not feel like it for a long time, but they will make me a better woman, stronger and more resilient than before these storms hit my life.