Good Intentions

It's been a rocky first month for me this year.  I keep trying and feeling like I'm not doing as much as I want to.  But I've been feeling sick off and on every since Christmas.  That or one of my kids (or more then one) is sick.  I feel like over the last couple days, being incredibly sick again, I've sort of given up.  I'm throwing in the towel.

At least until I feel like I can get my life back from these germs.

Sometimes I wish I could find a friend who's my twin who wouldn't make me feel guilty if they came over and cleaned my house for me or watched my kids for me.  I'd do it for her, ya know.

I've got such a short fuse when I'm sick.  Probably a good thing that I'm so hoarse that I sound like a bird when I try to yell.  Since I'm trying to yell more often and so suddenly without much cause.  Whisper?  Yeah...don't remind me.

Yesterday I woke up kind of hazy.  (Surprising when I have a sinus headache?  No.)  Through the hazy it was a dreamy way to wake up and I found myself having poetic thoughts.  I have to say, I think somewhere in my subconscious the origination of this idea is somewhere linked with this blog post, since it resonated with me so deeply.  Honestly, that post is probably a million times better then mine will be.  Mine is quite weird, actually, but bare with me.  If you don't like it, just go back over to her link and read her post again.  Yeah.  It's that good.

So in my dreamy poetic haziness yesterday morning, I grabbed a pen to write some of it down on my notebook.  Many of my best poems can be born this way.  This one was quite scattered so I've needed to do some organizing from the first segments of that morning.  I don't exactly know what to do with it.  Prose poetry?  Poetry?  I don't know, but I thought I'd record it nonetheless.  Work in progress.



Catching Raindrops, Raining Upward

I'm placed on this space,
bucket in my hands.
Memories gone, purpose unknown,
I begin walking
and the rain begins falling.

The urge bursts inside,
a pitted cherry for a heart,
and I am catching droplets.
Running
I splash into trillions, scattering.
Surrounding impossibility.
The raindrops keep falling
and I cannot catch them all.
I cannot catch them all.
I cannot catch them.

And I am soaked.
Hair damp, clothes
wet, heavy hanging
Rubber legs pull
shoes slosh and slow
down
up

Weight shifts, and my hair hangs high
droplets creeping up my back
up and off my hair's tips above me
My stories climb the back of my throat
as dew collides and
I cry as failures fly
and I find I am coming dry
from the drips but
it hurts
clinging, a painful escape
but I am inadvertently
glad.
Once they are gone, I am
weightless.

All for the drops in my bucket.

They are an anvil
pulling at my arm,
heaviness growing
I drop it to the ground
and they are golden.

Golden droplets rise from within
drop by drop, a translucence yields
to memories:
A hug I gave a child.
A spill I cleaned from the floor.
A smile I gave a stranger.
The cookies I left at her door.
A meal I gave the needy.
A blanket I gave the cold.
A kiss I placed on his cheek.
A friendship to a lonesome old.
An hour I spent to listen.
A dollar I spent to give.
A gift from the heart to another.
A hope for ones will to live.

The drops kept on rising
joy-filled beauty inside
spilling over onto my face
in weightless tears.
And a voice from the light around me stated
"You did the best you could, my child.  Every drop counts."

Graditude

It is so important to be willing to give service to others. Looking for those opportunities is the best way to find them. I know when I am looking for them, it's a lot easier to find needs that I might not have noticed if I wasn't looking.

This past weekend we had a crazy storm with huge raindrops. It was measured to be coming down about 1 1/2 inches per hour! It was insanity! Hail also accompanied it. Water was running down my street and filling our garden. My husband was worried about our plants until we started to receive phone calls from members of my church in our neighborhood. People's basements were flooding!

Jimmy didn't hesitate and went to help suck water out of basements with his shop vac. Today I heard back from someone that he helped people in one home to rip up their carpet because it was ruined from the flooding! I wasn't only impressed by my husband but by many people in the neighborhood who stepped up.

We had more then a few phone calls from people in the ward just checking up on us to make sure we didn't have any flooding. I also had a couple people call me and ask me to call other people in the ward to check on them. I checked on the families I go visiting teaching to. My visiting teaching partner was gone for the day but when she got home she found her neighbors had sucked water out of her window wells and saved her basement from really flooding. She went over to check the window wells of another sister we know who was gone for a couple of the summer months.

I am so grateful to have some wonderful people surrounding me in my neighborhood. We really pull together to help each other - not only in the sudden death and funeral services we had recently - but also with any disasters large or small. I know I could count on my ward for anything and that's a beautiful feeling. Knowing this makes me even more willing and ready to serve them as well with anything. I'm all ears for some way to serve.