today was not one of those days

Driving to work this morning, a necessary trip to the bank caused a detour I wasn't expecting. So there I was taking a street I didn't normally take, thinking about how much I miss my boys already, even though it hasn't even been a week since they left for the summer.

Thinking about heavy burdens some of my dear friends back in Boise are dealing with, and how helpless I feel to do anything but send them encouragement and the occasional Jamba Juice gift card from across the distance.

 Thinking about the increasing aches and pains and fatigue my body has been plaguing me with lately--some as a result of my rheumatic heart condition, and some--I fear--the pre-cursors to Multiple Sclerosis, a diagnosis which has plagued many in my family.

And finally, thinking about the text my old neighbor sent yesterday telling me the yard at my once dream home, the one I spent countless hours fertilizing, mending sprinklers for, mowing, and beautifying--has shriveled up to a dry nothing, having gone un-watered as my home continues to sit in limbo, unable to go through with the short sale due to liens slapped on it by my ex-husband's creditors and which the creditors will not (even with pressure from an attorney and even though the house was clearly given to me in the divorce)  release until $3000 of the $18,000 owed on them is payed. And I just don't have $3000. And no one I know has $3000. Because the world seems broke and scary and harder to make any financial progress in.

So, again, there I was, peppered with worries like so many of us are, not despairing but a little overwhelmed--when suddenly, the sun made the most perfect ring around the steeple of an old white clapboard church, the divided panes of its stained glass windows glistening like little gems. There was a couple walking down the street, holding hands, passing under a Jacaranda tree dropping the last of its purple-blue blooms. George Winston, playing the piano in his simple, honest way, came on the jazz station. I felt my body which, today, felt good, strong, rested, ready to take on whatever. I thought about how nice it would be, how nice it always is, to come home to my Mr. Perfect--busy at work in his loft office, the way he pokes his smiling face over the ledge wall and calls out to me, "Hello, Wife!" as I walk in the door.

I remembered, very keenly, other mornings that were not so nice as this one. Mornings it felt like things were so hard that they'd never get better, that the odds were so overwhelming I could do nothing more but get up and go through the motions. Mornings where absolutely nothing made sense and nothing seemed happy.

Today was not one of those days.

Today, I was grateful that--despite the trials that will, I suppose, always accompany me in some aggravating form or another, I was exactly where I was, who I was with, what I was, and for what I went through to get here.

Today I remembered, again, and which I hope I never stop remembering--

Good things come. They come when you most need them or least expect them or feel as if you don't deserve them. They come incrementally or in miraculous bounds. They come when you've given up any hope of them coming. They come in different forms than you expect, but which can be every bit as good, if you let them be. If you keep putting good out there in the world, if you keep believing in good, good WILL come back to you.

And, really, isn't that enough?