Notes to My Loves

A balm to a wounded heart or a verbal lashing to a tender one. Carefully crafted to be both inspiring and intentional they propel us to accomplish the seemingly impossible.  They are equally prideful and powerful. They can be both honorable or hateful. Calculating and cutting, they have the power to shred us. Witty and wonderful, they make our souls laugh and our hearts smile. Compassionate and carefully woven or quick tempered and flaring, they leave their mark. Quietly uttered or clanging, they are remembered. Poetic and powerful, they nestle in our hearts. Beautiful and buoyant, they are a beckoning beacon of hope. Words. Spoken by 7 billion people all over the world . We absorb them in poems. We devour them in prose. We cherish them in songs that we listen to over and over again. We buy them in cards that line the shelves on any given Tuesday. We connect to them even though they were not written by our own hand. A stranger's thoughts that mirror our own. A stranger'

There are times in our lives that we get the right picture. We capture the precise moment when something wonderful is happening. The focus is there. The lighting is absolutely National Geographic quality. Perhaps it is the award winning smile of a little cub scout getting a trophy for his first Pinewood Derby win. Maybe it is the the high note on a brass trumpet for a fifth grade ensemble, or the smile of the sweetest little girl belting out her first holiday concert in a smart red plaid skirt. These times are snapshots of our lives. They are the events that weave the fabric of our hearts. A fabric that will keep us warm long after those days are over. We can look back over those pictures and remember the moment. They bring us back to where we were when we shot that image. They allow us the ability to time travel with both our hearts and minds.  These images allow us to relive times that brought much joy and happiness in a world that is often swallowing us with sorrow and grief.

      A 'silver lining'.  The belief that even in the darkest of circumstances there is a positive outcome that will make everything better. Often when we deal with obstacles or events that just didn't go the way we planned, we cling to this proverb.     However, in this life of ours here on earth, sometimes there isn't one. There is no light shining down from the dark clouds. There is nothing silver. There is no light. There is just darkness. There is just grief. There is overwhelming sadness and confusion.  The questions bombard our brains with no answers that make sense of loss. A loss so deep that time doesn't really heal it at all. It just makes the pain throb less.      Sometimes it seems that the world is just a tad off kilter. Kind of like the lens of a camera that is just not quite in focus. A picture that is slightly out of focus and crooked no matter how many times you try to right it.      I see it in the news. I read online. But today, it hit my h