Lovely In My Heart

On Sunday, Ayla handed Indy a flower. Indy clutched it to her chest and said "Thank you Ayla. This is lovely in my heart."

That is one of the endings to this story.

Good Friday brought Noah and I to a new low.

I don't mean that we found ourselves scamming money from blind elderly people who volunteer with children. I mean we felt depressed.

I feel sort of guilty saying that. Like I'm comparing our pain to that of Jesus on Good Friday. I'm not.

A strange thing happened, in the midst of this pain. I found myself returning to the religious rituals of my childhood. Rituals I have mostly abandoned, for a reason that was valid to my spirit. There were things I needed to abandon so that some day, if I was to claim them, I could claim them whole-heartedly and for myself, and not because I had been taught to do so when I was small.

But that's a whole other post.

I found myself on the bottom of the bathtub with the shower on (we are really being honest here, yes?) repeating:

Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil, for thou art with me.

I repeated, Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life.

I asked a question.

Sometimes when I ask things like this, something in me answers back.

I don't know if it's God, or if it's my soul, or if it's my mind saying what it wants to hear. I don't know, and I've decided it doesn't matter.

I asked where my blessings were and I thought of my daughters.

I asked for help and I heard something say that if I can learn that happiness is a choice, happiness is a state of mind, then I have earned a blessing nobody and nothing can take from me.

Not nobody not no how.

I heard a voice telling me to choose to be happy through this, and good things will follow.

And if you believe that the Divine is in you, then maybe you hear the Divine, and maybe you hear you, and maybe the divide is not as great as you imagined.

I'm not expecting: Learn to be happy, get a book published, strike it rich, buy a home in the country, take many vacations. I know better than that by now.

I'm expecting this: Choose to be happy. Learn to keep choosing it, over and over again. Like a child from a fairy tale, take that precious gem. Tuck it in your pocket. Refuse to surrender it. Carry it with you through the dark and wicked forest. The wind will howl. Remember it's there. Feel it in your fingers. You don't have to look at it. It is something you know by heart. And then--

In the light you will ever remain.