"Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid."
~Frederick Buechner
I used to view the world around me from a card table chair that I could fold up at any time,
when I did not want to face what stood before me.
And in that place all the debris and wreckage seemed greater than even one beautiful thing.
So my gratitude walked away empty like an abandoned room.
Real life does not have "high definition" big screen television.
The big picture can be fuzzy,
and all the details can be hard to detect.
Hope can fall down unnoticed, like a penny beneath a chair cushion,
and everything one sees can be distorted and hard to view.
For clarity can be held close and then lost like an abducted child,
leaving a soul to feel forsaken and lost in the rubble.
I know that feeling. I have held it within my soiled hands,
and cradled it like a forlorn orphan, unable to let it go or see past the pain.
Vision is a tricky thing...what we see, and what truly lies in front of us
sometimes are simply not the same thing.
There is growth in adversity, like seeds sent astray in a harsh wind,
greenery will sprout all around in time, but until then,
all you may see is clutter and chaos.
Hope is a beautiful velvet chair that sits in the midst of troubles.
You may not see it now, but it is there just the same.
Let your heart find it, and then plop like a child into it's fold
of open velveteen wings, and then choose to see the sunlight
within the open window ahead.