I spent several hours over that last few days cleaning my room. I am not a messy person, so you might be surprised to hear that I could really spend HOURS cleaning my own room, but it is true. Hours and hours of my life gone, because for some unknown reason I saved every single piece of paper that came across my field of view. I’m not one to hang on to stuff, but papers seem to pile up in all the places I can manage to hide them. I’d had enough of the piles; thus the hours of cleaning.
Among the piles of scribbles and school handbooks, I found a few gems:
- Lots and lots of blank paper (at least on one side) for the kids to draw on. We are ALWAYS running low on scrap paper, so this was a wonderful find.
- A whole host of “lost” pens. How they managed to get sucked into my piles and piles of papers is a mystery which may never be solved.
- A lot of papers from my children, professing their love to me. Especially coming from Erica, these papers mean a lot. Many of those drawings were done by her in a time of her life when she seemed to detest me the most; no hugs or praise were welcome, no desire to be cuddled or helped in any way, no expression of love was acceptable to her, and the only interactions she and I had on a regular basis were negative and draining to us both. So to find papers from her saying she loved me, and pictures she drew of me and herself together, smiling, with hearts, brought my slowly healing heart so much joy.
- A bookmark, which actually is the reason for this post. On the bookmark is a short poem that really spoke to me. I don’t recall ever reading it before (I have no idea where I got this bookmark from as it is not even remotely familiar to me) but it was so meaningful that I had to share. I hope you will take from it some hope and courage. Sometimes life seems so hard that I feel like giving up. A few very dark times in my life, I have come too near giving up to be able to comfortably share in such an impersonal setting as a blog post. But there is always an end to every seemingly endless trial. I have learned through some very difficult times that the moments when things seemed the most dark and dreary were when I really learned and grew emotionally and spiritually. So read on, and find hope when you feel there is none to be found.
