SWB: Great Expectations

Image found at designstar.
When did I feel most whole? Most fragmented?

The pieces of amber glass scattered in a camouflage on the wood floor in the kitchen. There were "I'm sorry's", there were "Let's get this cleaned up.", and there may have been a tear or two in the letting go of the tension and frustration of the past week. Just like the glass, the unpredictable emotions lay here and there. Some were tidily swept up and disposed of properly, and others expectantly lay in the cracks between the boards for a bare-footed victim to brush it's vulnerable toes along the jagged surface. Sometimes emotions help us press on in the face of a challenge, and other times emotions make us stumble and fall into the varied collage of life we are living.

WHOLE
It's the last few days before the arrival of Christmas. The shopping is complete, the kid's church Christmas Program came and went in a rush of activity and cute impish angel children, the cookie exchange has be traded and consumed, and finally today the tree is up, decorated and gleaming in the corner of the living room with wrapped presents taunting and shimmering under it.

FRAGMENTED
It's also been a week of working through a reoccurring but now serious back issue for my husband. We went for three visits to the chiropractor, a visit to the primary care doctor, a trip to the pharmacy for medications, a back x-ray, and urgent MRI on Saturday morning, and waiting to hear news all day today. At 4:50pm today, we learned there are at least two disks that are surrounded by bulging, there is a great deal of pain, there is limited mobility, and there is a Tuesday morning coming with a phone consult with the doctor and on to the next step to see options with a surgeon/specialist... let me tell you my husband wants ALL THE OPTIONS before we talk surgery.


Italian glass fragments found at Time trail.

In the moments of WHOLENESS and feeling FRAGMENTED; hope always seemed to stay close to me. In the hug from a child, a coffee with a friend, a prayer in the middle of a discount store and the support of good friends at church giving their prayers and assurances.

I stood alone in the kitchen earlier this morning. The same kitchen that had broken glass scattered just a day or so before and felt these words wash over me...

"It's going to be alright."

It seems that I was not alone after all; really I never am. I know G-d is with me always; in the broken glass, in times of wholeness, and in the fragmented days.

Matthew 28:16Then the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go. 17When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. 18Then Jesus came to them and said, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in[a] the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age."

It has and always will be my great expectation, that G-d is with us in all of this, that and the other. G-d is not just waiting in the wings somewhere. G-d is in the kitchen with me, helping me sweep up all the broken pieces in my life and heart. Maybe G-d will take these pieces I don't know how to mend and turn them into a beautiful mosaic or stained glass window. I might not see what it will look like today, but someday the sun will shine through this window of my life and I will say, "Ah ha - now I see what all that was for."
Mosaic image found at Aradhya Exports.