Awake

As long as I live, I will never understand illness or accidents or the things that seem to jar you awake out of a sound sweet sleep.

I look across the room and see my sweet girl cutting up the prettiest of flowers.  Getting things ready, making things beautiful.  She has a widely creative heart like her Grandma.  She never knew her grandma, her namesake but that grandma of hers loved a fresh vase of flowers probably more than any gift she could ever get.  She would snip fresh roses off the vines all summer.

My girl was snipping sunflowers.  I heard the knife drop and watched how her she grabbed one hand into the other.  We stood by the sink and watched how blood dripped until we could snatch it up in towels.

Although completely awake, this jarred me too.  So set on my agenda I had to reset to respond. Little fingers heal quickly; hearts sometimes take a long time to learn.

I worked quietly.  My girl now bandaged and resting, I finished the flowers. I set them on the tables.  She would heal.  Tomorrow she would hardly know anything had happened.  I missed her now; I missed the gift of her presence laboring with me.  I didn’t feel or see or even sense the joy of that moment until it was taken away.

Until the blood was spilled.

We course through life as if it is a race.  Where are the winners?  Are they the fastest or the ones that slow down and notice?  We are so addicted to the pace; we forget the present.  So enamored with the goal, we ignore the gifts.  So pulled to perfection, we forget He is ours and we are His.

But then illness, or injury bolts in front of us and we stop, we see, we listen to a thousand little things we had missed all along.  They play the simple melody of life inhaled instead of life controlled and manipulated and orchestrated and displayed.

I am awake now.  I slow down and I see.  The blood spilled is the race won.