2 February 2013

Sorrow prepares you for joy. It violently sweeps everything out of your house, so that new joy can find space to enter. It shakes the yellow leaves from the bough of your heart, so that fresh, green leaves can grow in their place. It pulls up the rotten roots, so that new roots hidden beneath have room to grow. Whatever sorrow shakes from your heart, far better things will take their place.

~ Rumi

Today is Groundhogs Day.  David’s grandmother’s birthday.  Who else knows that except for me?  Cousin Ilene, for sure; Cheshire maybe, who else, who else?  And then does it matter?  I guess as long as someone remembers, it matters.  

This path of aging, growing older is full of so many new ideas, theories, pitfalls, dead stops and forks in the road that I did not expect. The path seems so much harder than the path of youth or young adulthood or middle age, but those paths were challenges in their own times.  I don’t really think the challenges are any harder now, although, for me, without a partner, they may take longer to figure out.  

I hope I grow in wisdom.  I hope I can do some good as I stumble along.  I hope I am enough for those whom I love.

There is snow again this morning.  I did not plan time to take care of it before we left for Julia’s clinic therapy morning.  I hope it is not too trampled by the time we get home and I fire up the snowblower.  When I looked out the window upon rising this morning, I sighed deeply, not at all pleasantly surprised by the new snow.  And then had to laugh at myself -- February, Wisconsin . . . What do I expect??

The Rumi quote keeps banging around inside my head, like a overactive racquetball in the white courts at the JCC.  I heard much the same thing, albeit no where near as poetical, from Sr. Francis when I was a senior in high school and very much broken hearted.  I found it hard to believe her and then never told her how correct she was.  I find it hard to believe now.  But what I find hard is only the very last line, the “far better things” that are coming.  I agree, completely agree, with the sweeping and shaking.  And this moment, maybe such a shaking is enough to be able to embrace.