Beauty in the everyday

I gave it up.  Spent months following a plan.  Never allowing it to be fully realized, the potential it could have held for me.  Feeling sorry for myself, wanting desperately to be able to rely on processed foods, the ease of picking something up to eat.  Hungry all the time, fearing I would start to resemble a nut.  I don't know when it happened.  Slowly, other foods crept in.  I gave myself permission to "just this time" eat something forbidden.  Here I am again.  Back to a place I didn't want to find myself.  Eating to my hearts content.  No self control.  Filling up til I'm beyond full.  I like feeling full.  Even though it makes me sick.  Back to thinking that it's just too hard to live otherwise.  And then my thoughts are drawn to a friend who laid his 46 year old son to rest last week.  

For 46 years my friend and his wife cared for a child that couldn't care for himself.  Year after year he was asked when they would be putting their son into a home.  List after list they placed their needy child on.  Time after time this child's name would rise to the top.  The answer given was always the same, the parents would say "not now".  Looking in from the outside it seemed an insurmountable burden to bear.  Caregivers needed round the clock for this child turned grown man.  

My friend now weeps daily for the loss of the presence of his child.  His one child that never left home.   I thought it would be a burden he would be able to give up willingly when the time came.  Freedom to not have to make plans around caregivers schedules.  Yet my friend so misses his son who could light up a room with his smile, though he comprehended little he gave much life to those around him.  My friend valued his son.  My friend rose each morning and did what he had to do because he understood the value of one life.  He woke up and did what he had to do in order to keep that one life living to his fullest potential. 

When I put my life in perspective my daily struggles seem so minor.  The inconveniences so small that challenge me.  I often think what if I didn't have a choice as to how I lived?  I don't have to rely on others for my everyday care.  I have limbs that work.  I am not confined by a wheelchair.  I can choose when to eat, what to eat.  Foods that will give me life or contribute to my mediocre state.  I need to give up my idealistic thinking that I will eventually get to a place where living is easy, pain-free, where it doesn't take work to exist.  I am blessed.  I am blessed when I wake up in the morning and I can lift my legs out of bed.  I am blessed when I am able to put a spoon to my mouth and chew.  I am blessed.  My friend was beyond blessed for seeing beauty in the everyday mundane tasks.  

We come with beautiful secrets

We come with purposes written on our hearts, written on our souls

We come to every new morning

With possibilities only we can hold, that only we can hold

Redemption comes in strange places, small spaces

Calling out the best of who we are

And I want to add to the beauty

To tell a better story

I want to shine with the light

That's burning up inside

It comes in small inspirations

It brings redemption to life and work

To our lives and our work

It comes in loving community

It comes in helping a soul find it's worth...

~Add to the Beauty by Sara Groves