I am sitting here in my oldest daughter’s house, enjoying the peace and quiet, that is until Peyton, their dog starts bellowing at something outside and my heart jumps inside my chest! It’s been a nice evening, as I spend some time with him before heading home for the night. The kids are out of town for the weekend and I will actually enjoy a little “staycation” here tomorrow night thru Sunday and keep Peyton company and out of trouble. It will be nice, I can watch the football games I would miss at home and just enjoy the “feel” of being away from home as Open Enrollment has started this week, and it will really start to get crazy as the days go by in the weeks to come. I love my job, but for the next two months, I will be thankful for extra coffee and lots of OT!

Speaking of being thankful, I am still so filled with gratitude and have been really left without words. Roughly five or six weeks ago, my van decided to finally give me the last it had to offer and left me stranded on the interstate on a Saturday afternoon when it was 98 degrees out! Thankfully I have roadside assistance and they were quicker than the 50 minute estimate given in my app and after dropping off another car, took me home. I had visited with my mom while waiting for the driver, all just to kill the time, so what happened later that week was truly wonderful and such a blessing. We text pretty regularly now, but on Thursday, she asked me to call her. I did so after work and that was when she told me she wanted to gift me her extra car. I was stunned and did nearly start to cry. So much brokenness and pain that had been between the two of us for so many years, and now through our simple gestures of morning hellos or afternoon I love you, we our rebuilding something that perhaps we never really had before and it is through that reconstruction of our tattered relationship that we are finding something new.

It would be a couple weeks before I could make the 2 1/2 – 3 hour trip to be able to pick up the car, as there were family engagements on this side of the state, but it would be worth the wait to have something to drive again that I could travel more than 1-2 miles from my apartment. So this past weekend, Saturday morning, my son and I hit the road and made the trip to see my mom, his grand mother, that he hadn’t seen in years. It was a fun drive, laughing together and listening to music, and we almost made the entire trip without a stop – but mom has a weak bladder and drank too much water 😛

Once we got to my mom’s she gave us both hugs and we sat and had lunch together. It was nice to visit and it was nice to hear her talk about some of the things she is doing now; that she is getting out of the house for church and lunch with friends. I hate the idea of her being by herself most of the time, because I am too, I know what it feels like, what an empty room sounds like, how the absence of sound can affect you. Its only been five months since my step dad has been gone, and I know that it leaves an odd empty place for me, I can’t imagine what she must still feel, after spending over 40 years of her life with him. I was able to bring her a really lovely garden stone with a cardinal on it to have in her garden, as that is one thing I am so very glad she still enjoys doing, and it will continue to keep her busy each and every summer. She seemed to really like it and said she would wait until next year to put it out, and again committed how much she liked the cardinal.

We were there for about an hour or so, but with the long drive we did need to head back and so we said our goodbyes, I thanked my mom again for her generous gift and that I appreciated it more than I could express. She simply said, she had prayed about it and that was what God wanted her to do. That too made smile, made my heart happy. Because isn’t that all any of us want to do? The next right thing, which we would hope is what God, or Jesus, or Whoever you may call your own High Power would want you to do? As I drove home, I was filled with a sense of connection once loss, but now tethered once again, and the young girl lost and unseen, was always there; she just needed to step out of the darkness to be seen and heard. Even if it is only to whisper into the night, I’m still here and I love you.