Sometimes they are literal and sudden...such as the tragedy of yesterday. How utterly horrifying for those runners and all the friends and family and supporters along the way. A day that has been meticulously planned for, where the months of gritty work is finally realized and ends in complete mayhem and confusion is just stunning.
Sometimes, though, disaster creeps up on you. The Original Big Man's future remains unclear. His delirium persists and we just feel like maybe this might be it. This might be who we have now, a weak man with few lucid moments just lying in a hospital bed. It's been a slip and slide sort of realization after all the whiplash of he's dying! He lived! He'll recover, right? Or won't he? What is his future? What is ours? No one seems to know.
But I am reminded of the goodness in our families and our friends.
My mom had arrangements to visit so I could be with my mother-in-law when her oldest daughter finally had to return to her real life. My brother had arrangements to leave at a moment's notice just to be with us as needed. My sister took my baby boy for two nights so I could help my in-laws. My friends have called and sent messages and offered their ears and their hands and cared for my kids. I am breathing in daily the beauty of people whose good wishes and prayers sustain us.
The folks in Boston will do the same.
Whether it takes you by surprise or the hard truth slowly creeps in, the feelings are no different. Shock at the situation you are in, grief as the circumstances reveal themselves, pain at what is lost. It's all there no matter how it arrives.
People do show up whether or not you have lived life well by making deposits and investments in those around you. No matter the circumstances and without a background check, people give with abandon, pray without asking, love without questioning, and, as we saw yesterday, run toward the disaster to help, to serve. Rather than wonder at the horrors, it seems best to take in the light, that golden gleaming nuggets of evidence that goodness is far more resilient than any brief flash of evil.
For all of us, Life is a series of tiny explosions made smaller by the work of our hands and heft of our hearts
Sometimes, though, disaster creeps up on you. The Original Big Man's future remains unclear. His delirium persists and we just feel like maybe this might be it. This might be who we have now, a weak man with few lucid moments just lying in a hospital bed. It's been a slip and slide sort of realization after all the whiplash of he's dying! He lived! He'll recover, right? Or won't he? What is his future? What is ours? No one seems to know.
But I am reminded of the goodness in our families and our friends.
My mom had arrangements to visit so I could be with my mother-in-law when her oldest daughter finally had to return to her real life. My brother had arrangements to leave at a moment's notice just to be with us as needed. My sister took my baby boy for two nights so I could help my in-laws. My friends have called and sent messages and offered their ears and their hands and cared for my kids. I am breathing in daily the beauty of people whose good wishes and prayers sustain us.
The folks in Boston will do the same.
Whether it takes you by surprise or the hard truth slowly creeps in, the feelings are no different. Shock at the situation you are in, grief as the circumstances reveal themselves, pain at what is lost. It's all there no matter how it arrives.
People do show up whether or not you have lived life well by making deposits and investments in those around you. No matter the circumstances and without a background check, people give with abandon, pray without asking, love without questioning, and, as we saw yesterday, run toward the disaster to help, to serve. Rather than wonder at the horrors, it seems best to take in the light, that golden gleaming nuggets of evidence that goodness is far more resilient than any brief flash of evil.
For all of us, Life is a series of tiny explosions made smaller by the work of our hands and heft of our hearts
This made me cry. It is the thing that always gets me wwith great tragedies or even with difficult challenges in my own life: that people show up, that people help, that people run IN. Amazing. It makes you so grateful and it is a lesson I learn over and over again when I go thorugh something tough. I am not alone. Only if I keep my challenges and pain to myself. But if others know they come running in to help. Always. Amazing.
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