Author: Suzanne In Plain Sight

We All Belong To Each Other

We all belong to each-other. We are connected to the ones we would want to have no connection with…the ones we judge or are embarrassed by…the stranger and the ones we have distanced ourselves from….we are connected because humanity belongs to one another.

The white, wealthy suit and the 20 something struggling, smells like smoke connected….immigrant and neo-nazi, connected. Non citizen middle schooler and mom on fund raising committee at the private school, connected.

Thought: rather than complain about someone living off the system be the system. Connect. Be with them. Show up. Help break the cycle.

Don’t just give that toy for tots or drop a quarter in a bucket…open your eyes and go take a meal and some toys and sit with them. Then do it again. Take someone to get some help. Become their person, their connection….love your people, people. We are eachothers. Live greatly anticipated between the advents.

When Days Aren’t Ordered

This year I didn’t order my days according to the November calendar. It didn’t occur to me. Gratitude has not disappeared, but the ordered days of knowing my next thing next rare.

Bittersweet

Ordering my days was my specialty. Accounting for the details and anticipating how I would need to anticipate a plan for every contingent outcome of living, good or bad, helped with an unsteady sense of safety and multiplied my anxiety.

Incongruent

I have found less anxiety walking with less assurance of safety. This was not a twist I was expecting.

Facing fires and bad guys and grief in the same breaths of stillness and innocence and life didn’t kill me even as had my built in safety shift and change and sometimes disappear all together. Life is harder and more connected and worth it today.

This was just last year when I was ordering my days; it was a hard day. I remember it distinctly. I had been hurt and I hardened my outside for this season I’m still muddling through while tentatively trying to keep my heart soft. God is good to protect and shield the fragility of our hearts. I remember feeling a tangible physical shift as I exhaled just after taking this picture. I couldn’t have imagined my life today. I wish in some ways I had known more about the coming months, not to change the living of these 365 days , but to absorb more of what would change or go away. I wish I understood that there would be other things I could never unknow and appreciate the ignorance.

Today, This Moment, I do not wish none of it had ever happened.

I am not grateful for it all today. No. However, I do not want to run from it all. Come to find out, the very safety I was running for is closer than I thought.