Band-Aids For My Heart

Joy: Tissue Paper Flying Through the Air. Carly, Me, Cadence. My Birthday, 2011.

What’s In Your First Aid Kit?
My friend (okay, heart-sister) Nancy Franson asks a really good question: If you were packing a soul-care kit, what would yours contain? And in that amazing way of heart-sisters everywhere, the question was just what I needed to contemplate right now.

Because the world’s had me in the ring, lately. And my heart’s been on the ropes, taking a big old beating. Nancy’s post rang out as clearly as the referee’s bell:

This round is over. I’ve got the best Corner Man ever. It’s time to sit for a minute, take a cool drink, and offer up my battered heart for some first aid.

I need a styptic pencil.

Joy staunches the flow. My heart bleeds tears (yours too?) and once they start to run, I end up dry. I could just blow away, a brittle leaf on a hot, dry, breeze. Nothing halts the flood like joy.

Joy works like this: I don’t usually make messes on purpose–I’m a mom, right? And a Lala! People like me clean up messes. So when I pulled the pretty pink and polka-dotted tissue from my birthday gift and tossed it into the air, I reaped the delight of the two grandlittles who were my Designated Gift-Opening Assistants for the day.

You can see the joy, right there on our faces. 

I need a pressure bandage.

Peace binds my wounds. That Man in the corner, He cares for me, wrapping my dried-out heart in peace.

Gazing on His magnificent creation covers the injuries, holds them tight, tight until they don’t hurt anymore. He made these amazing hills, then He dressed them in 32 shades of green, and tumbled them right down to the blue, endless, ocean.

See? 

Peace: It’s Right Outside the Window.  Somewhere on the California Coast. February,

I need water. 

Mercy Singing Down the Mountainside. Tahiti, 2004.