Interior Struggles

I've always known that life is hard.  When I was younger, I thought the fact that life was hard meant that something needed to be fixed and, once all was made right, life would be back on course, smooth sailing.  I suppose you could say that the scales have fallen from my eyes because now, I know that life can mostly be labeled as less hard, hard, harder and hardest.  

My uncle died this morning and, when I talked to my cousin, one of my very favorite people, she was crying.  You would think that an event this important, this cataclysmic, would stop time--that for a few moments, the earth would forget to spin and everyone would know that something had forever changed.  Even without the earth stopping or a universal shout, for some, January 27, 2012 will be a watershed date,  a date that divides life into "before" and "after".  My heart goes out to my cousins.

If my eight-year-old self had known that, at 41, I still would not know many answers to the most important questions, well--who knows--would that have been a good thing?  The truth is, so many years later, I have built a life full of responsibility.  I am the leader of my children, the one to show them what it is to be a woman.  It's truly humbling.  Sometimes I am certain that they understand much more than I do.  But--I take comfort in the fact that it is the lost coin that the woman sweeps and looks so hard to find and the lost sheep that our Good Shepherd seeks.

Uncle Larry, I love you.  I am praying you home.