A clean slate

While I was looking up quotes, I found this one and it really struck me hard. I sent it to my husband, with an admonishment, a plea; let us see this now before it's too late. Let us live this way each and every day with eyes open and hearts open to each other before one of us passes to the next plane of existence and we are stuck with the weight of memories and perhaps regrets.

 

Over the last several years, little by little I have felt my eyes opening to the realization that perhaps the joy and happiness I think many of us search for- the moment when life will get easier and the kids will be better behaved or the house will stay clean or we will have more money- those things are an illusion. I am tired of yearning for the future "what-ifs" and instead I resolve to see it now. So I guess this is my New Years resolution. Not to lose weight or eat healthier or try harder, although I want to change those things, I think for me I can only make those a reality when I have the Spirit of love combined with an urgency to not take forgranted today, the present now with all it's glorious lessons and gifts. Even the mundane moments in life, the times when things feel hard or frustrating, let those be wake up calls to go deeper, to search harder for the holiness and the beauty within the present moment. Let the grief of losing the ones we love, let the bad news of this world serve a purpose to help me love those in my life a little better, to learn from my mistakes and not run from them. I will ask what I can do to make a difference and then do it. In that space is where I continuously find meaning and the energy to keep scaling life's mountains.

“Grief can destroy you --or focus you. You can decide a relationship was all for nothing if it had to end in death, and you alone. OR you can realize that every moment of it had more meaning than you dared to recognize at the time, so much meaning it scared you, so you just lived, just took for granted the love and laughter of each day, and didn't allow yourself to consider the sacredness of it. But when it's over and you're alone, you begin to see that it wasn't just a movie and a dinner together, not just watching sunsets together, not just scrubbing a floor or washing dishes together or worrying over a high electric bill. It was everything, it was the why of life, every event and precious moment of it. The answer to the mystery of existence is the love you shared sometimes so imperfectly, and when the loss wakes you to the deeper beauty of it, to the sanctity of it, you can't get off your knees for a long time, you're driven to your knees not by the weight of the loss but by gratitude for what preceded the loss. And the ache is always there, but one day not the emptiness, because to nurture the emptiness, to take solace in it, is to disrespect the gift of life.” ―Dean Koontz