How can I stop now?
Whenever you think you’ve arrived to rest, you look around and inside you hear yourself exhale understanding, How can I stop now?
In deepest reflection, no matter the circumstances, to rejoice amidst any trials and tribulations is a freely given choice.
No one can make you genuinely be thankful for anything.
The genuineness comes from the realness of experience and found meaning.
To expect someone to behave in the same manner as you is to think you know where each moment in life they’ve been.
If sensibly and logically adhering to the understanding that our reactions, our tolerance levels, cannot and do not all withhold the same capacity, should we think to have any say in each of our deliverance?
Just the same, when one cannot arrive to fulfillment or gratification, should we shun upon one who has yet to discover such feeling?
All I can do, to my control, is model what I hope sheds light in others.
There is laughter to be found in your own thoughts of life, no matter how grim in the inside one perceives things to be.
Even in darkest moments, if one cannot see, hear, smell, taste, or feel light ahead, there is only more darkness to be discovered or found.
All could be of great abundance and yet, satisfaction seems to be at a loss sometimes. This is that moment where, when darkness has been a path known, such testament of missing bliss can be resolved within the snap of the heart, mind, body, and spirit.
Reason to rejoice has been planted.
Yesterday
There was a child who, while siblings were away, witnessed a man tied down, beaten until blood came streaming from his ear, his eyes fixated on the child as if to apologize for the memory that shall never be erased.
There was a child who had no say in leaving all she knew, finding herself way across the other side of the world to fend for herself, one school after another, feeling all those, when returning home each day, were facing their own trials and tribulations.
There was a child who walked into a home where she alarmed a man, closest to her at door entrance, to pull out a gun to point across the room, toward her family, unable, too little, too frozen to do anything but escape out to have a neighbor call for help as she last recalled her eventual beloved brother jumping in front of his parents to block any bullets that could fire upon them.
There was a child who woke to her father screaming and pounding on her same loyal, fearless, bullet-jumping brother’s bed only to find herself three days later dancing in a bathroom, trying to hum out the noise of the flatline sound as family’s wailed their good-byes to him one last time.
There was a child who knew going into high school, she had to quickly learn to tame herself upon facing a panel of district officials to explain herself with the presence of her parents, for her unwarranted loss of control, one offense in the record.
There was a child who found herself dropping to the floor, and as gently as she could, grabbed her nephew to cover her body over his, after processing her sister’s boyfriend’s rushing in plea for everyone to get down, as the house, all of a sudden, was high-beamed with headlights, guns aimed to stream the home, with several more found in trunks upon police arrival.
There was a child who walked in to see her brother curl up with her mother who quietly made sense that he had just told their mother he had ingested several pills, days later to stay in the car while her parents visited him in a sanctioned building of a hospital.
There was a child who saw the same brother take a kitchen knife to cut up the living room sofa after discovering that his mother, afraid and without alternative, called the police on him.
This child, with yesterday a testimony of training days, rejoices.
There has been so much grace and victories since to remind one that there are others each day, now tending to a garden full of seeds from all over the world, who may have or be going through similar battles, but like that child, said nothing.
She must always remember for them.
Today
In the times of roaming in Pleasantville, you start to find exhaustion in protecting and saving others.
If that child made it through with hardly, if any, a complaint, how difficult and challenging is it to hear one, amidst even simple trials, express agony?
You screamed and scolded in your younger years as a parent, not understanding the anxiety from within that just didn’t want anymore innocence to have to endure unwelcome circumstances.
Now, with gathered wisdom and greater discernment, you listen and listen some more, the heart, mind, body, and spirit now quieted.
The flesh selfishly yearns for that silence, however, the one always cherished in rare moments, tranquility at its finest.
Grateful to have been given the opportunity and role to be wanted, needed, and loved, your heart, mind, body, and spirit constantly battles with the carnal you.
To no one’s understanding or awareness, your greatest fight is daily within, a presence of something trying to take you down, constantly imminent, something that tries and discourages you from wanting to see, hear, smell, taste, or feel for anyone any longer, to protect and help anymore.
That child sings, dances, and laughs today, but still remembers yesterday.
That child works to heal others today, not truly convinced of having been healed herself from her own yesterdays.
That child, with no visible scars to tell a story today, was not meant to be believed if she was ever to convince others of yesterday.
That child, in silence, driven by yesterday, rejoicing in the escape and overcoming, must keep on guiding and directing within trained power to help today.
Tomorrow
The world may place you in a spot where what you have wanted to do just sits in your mind because what you are actually doing gets in the way.
While everything is great, knowing how blessed you are to have been given the life arrived to and openly received, you must remind yourself of yesterdays to rejoice the todays.
If trials and tribulations shall arrive, while better days will come again as you know, yesterdays have trained you well.
Peace within is where I can find time to myself, waking up to my own biological clock, following my own heart’s desire as what to conquer for the day. A blessing.
Strength within is knowing such moments are not always to one’s luxury- there must be constant servitude to help, aide, and guide those who may otherwise not make it through their own adolescence.
The selfish flesh asks for independence from all work and challenges.
And, yet, what would that truly be asking for?
I have five beautiful, bright, and healthy children I naturally all pushed out into this world with the same incredibly strong, loving, and protective husband and father beside me for over thirty years.
While moments of rest are given, there arrives time again where each moment takes you to another moment, and so, your mind thinks to just be under the covers, in the comfort of your own bed.
One can be tricked to tire from even blessings because the carnal whispers into your ear that rest is all you want and desire.
That time where your husband tells you before you even leave for the day how excited he is for you to get home so you can have your “date night”. A blessing.
You smile, spirit and heart wanting the same and yet, your mind and body speak of another thought- a resting place where there are no noise, just pure solace.
Your children healthily laughing, exchanging the ubiquitous sibling gestures and mockeries with one another, involving you in their moments of exchange. A blessing.
You smile, heart and mind thankful to have such times, and yet, your body and spirit speak of being tired and weary, trying to calm yourself while amidst the energy around.
To be loved and needed by those around you. A blessing.
And, yet, how interesting, the carnal trickery of having the greatest desire to have a moment to yourself can feel to be a reward and guilt at the same time.
That child who is grateful for all the blessings is constantly working off the gratitude, it seems.
How can you complain aloud of how you are truly feeling on the inside- having always wanted to just run and hide away from the world of combustion?
Being a teacher by day, being asked by so many of various questions, inquiries of the world that range from mathematical computations to world wonders to more personal thoughts once trust and comfort have been established to provide you such honor is an honorable, certified role.
Being a mother for over three decades and counting, you familiarly embrace the brief silence in your car, that drive where silence massages your head, the seat or confines of your sofa or bed giving rest from a day where a sprint and marathon just took place yet again, before facing yet more to follow.
You push through just a little bit more of hearing your own children’s thoughts and reports, your husband’s turn of wanting to touch base with you about his own thoughts, desiring for your input and opinions.
You eat and with grace, you creep to your room, change into comfort, slide under the covers, just a tad bit to decompress.
Tomorrow, Again
The world waits with its people. You get your role and your part. That rest was all you needed before knowing to rise again.
You rejoice with great thanks, for the wisdom and discernment of genuinely trained understanding …
The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside still waters, he restores my soul. He leads me in paths of righteousness, for his name’s sake.
Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, YOU are with me. Your rod, your staff, they comfort me.
You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies, you anoint my head with oil, my cup overflows.
Surely, I shall have goodness and mercy all the days of my life and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.
I rise again.
For, I am yours.
