Let's Be Light

 "You are responsible TO others not for others."

Murphy and I are OLD friends. This week I decided to clean out our pantry, freezer and fridge before the holidays. By Wednesday I had us down to two days left of food with everyone eating something different at every meal. Xander was quarantined for precautionary reasons but had no symptoms. I was planning to do a big store run on Thursday.

Cue positive Covid test for Sweet Daddy and quarantined for the rest of us.

We've been so blessed with helping taxi hands. My sister generously offered to come out here and pick a very large Walmart grocery order for me yesterday.

I ordered what I could to be shipped, and then all the fresh stuff she picked up.

At the last minute, I added a tin of the cookies to my pick up order. I dunk them in my sleepy time tea. I ordered the family size tin. Because sharing is inevitable here.

There was a large list of substitutions, a few items out of stock, and then this tin of cookies replaced my family size one.

It's smaller than my hand. It has 4 cookies in it.

I'd like to think if the Walmart shopper had a note from me that said something like " Dear Shopper, My husband is very sick with covid. I'm at home quarantined with 3 children. One of whom was supposed to have an amazing week of getting his driver's license, working a fun seasonal job, working out with his friends and is less than thrilled. One of whom can't process that her Daddy may not be able to celebrate Christmas with us next week. I need ALL the things."

I'd like to think if he/she read my note, that they would have found all the things.

I'd like to think if they knew my story, they would have found me a family size container of cookies. Or multiple tins of 4 cookies each.

As I looked at my tin of cookies this morning, I began to think....

Do we only make space for people when we know the whole story?

Are we the Walmart shoppers who look at the list and think "why don't they come get it themselves? they get what they get?"

We have a few people in our life that are VERY difficult to communicate with.

I've been really trying to create space for them. I don't know what it's like to carry what they are carrying.

I don't know the weight of their burdens or their depth of their story.

I've recently been on the flip side where I've been harshly judged for choices I've made. By someone who doesn't know the weight of my burdens or the depth of my story. By someone who assumed that my choices were a reaction to them rather than a response to my own knowing.

Mama Warriors, over the next week perhaps you will gather with difficult folks. I find that the people that frustrate me the most are somewhere on my family tree.

We feel like we intimately know them but I would hedge that we don't.

Let's create space for each other.

Let's be people who find the family size tin of cookies because it's what people need.

Let's give people what they NEED rather than deciding what they deserve.

Let's be LIGHT.

Published 2020