Wednesday, December 19, 2012

Joy to You, Baby

Two days until the end of the world. I've got 48 hours left. I feel like Keifer Sutherland all of a sudden. Were the world to truly end in two days, would you be relieved? Would you gather your things and burn them all in a big pile to say you beat things to the punch? Stand in front of a mirror and feign to be mostly OK with who's staring back at you? Would you serve? Start checking off that imagined bucket list you never wrote down? When you're holding the ones you love, would you tell jokes, or replay memories that make you weep? Could you find solace in your family's conglomerate ascension into heavenly realms? What would you tell your kids, your spouse, your mother...? Would you charge your iphone, or check your facebook?

I would find reprieve, but not call it relief. I would gather all my things and review them; allow whatever emotion tied to each thing, note, picture well-up and give me one more good run. I would bypass the mirror to look out the window. Had I impressed my reflection sufficiently, it would appear in the world around me. I would help where, whom I could. Keep those around me comfortable with love and warmth. With two short days, only one item would be on my bucket list and it would be to soak up as much time with my loved-ones as I can. I would remind my children of Heavenly Father and his son Jesus Christ, and that we'll be seeing them soon. I would tell them they made me. I would tell my husband that my life before him was about as useful as a rose in the shade; I'm so much more In Bloom when he shines with me. I would tell my mother she's the rock in the river that stops the flow and commands the river to flow around it, and what that example held for me.

Here's to the next 48.

Saturday, December 1, 2012

Saturday Morning Vinyl

It's Christmas time. It's an instinctual part of our generation to want to go out and buy things to demonstrate our affection and feel fulfilled somehow. These aren't bad things. Well, only if you don't have the means and wish it so. I've been struggling with this a little, and will most likely revisit the fight again, but right now listening to The Creek that Drank the Cradle by Iron & Wine on vinyl with my beautiful family is more than sufficient. My cup feels full.

I'm perplexed at how life can be such a struggle, but when you hear a lyric that says, "Mother, do you remember the blink of an eye when I breathed through your body?" you can be completely turned inside out and for a brief moment see things how they really are. Struggle or not, that's what's real. That's what's beautiful. Hardships do not eliminate the beauty of everything, or everyone. It enhances it. They coincide, and hopefully, collide often enough that we fail to categorize them. Beauty over here, Hard over there. Let them bleed together.