one penny more

yesterday was tough, but the peddeling of so many sugar laced treats to unsuspecting residents of local towns went well. my husband gave me a radio, so i was able to listen to some music during the long hours of our walking door to door. but i am tired today and have an unwelcome visitor whom i had not wanted to see for some months. i understand how restless sarah got when she was promised a child. i've no such promise, but the restlessness is the same. i tallied it up today, 96 months i've had my hopes dashed waiting for the next arrow to fill my quiver. the next gift from God. but i must content myself with one child of promise. so bright and beautiful she is. i must be grateful. so today, she is my joy and my delight. she is my hope fulfilled. i will not fashion a heir of promise, but will continue to wait. though months pass and i grow weary. though we have no resources to handle the blessing anyway (that has been my saving grace these last four years, if you can call financial struggles a saving grace. it assuaged my grief that we did not have to have the finances to raise another child, merely our singleton. our beautiful singleton. she was and is enough.).

joy. i brought home a stack of books yesterday and i'm finding merton a peculiar comfort again. and the words, "fruits of contemplation" were in the intro by some buddist who also used the words flowers in conjunction with that phrase. i find these crumbs upon my path a comfort. that all my theories and ideas are not so far fetched after all. that God is still, in fact, speaking to me.

i am coming to understand that shadows give depth. annie dillard talks of how some people who were born unsighted, got surgery and could see. but they saw in a flat plane. they walked by flats of color and could not perceive depth. such an interesting thought. some of them wanted to return to the unseeing world, so perplexing was the innundation of light and sight to them. i understand that longing. i sometimes want to go back to the unseeing world. to sitting bound before a wall with the lights and shadows of reflected fire at my back being the only reality. life, it seems, is a wonderful quagmire of trust and faith. only the brave dare truly live. i'm not quite sure if i'm one of them yet. but the thought of going back to the unseeing world, while a familiar comfort, is not one i can justify. or even contemplate long. we poets cannot live without depth perception. we must see beyond the flats of colour that surround our lives, and embrace the shadows of darkness that create life's depth.

may i see today with open eyes and a heart willing to love, and be loved. may i trust again with the faith of my little child, that it all works out well in the end. (how? it is a mystery). i pray the same for you.