Good morning…
After pushing through our post Pregnant With Worry, around 2:15 pm yesterday little Lucy breathed her first breath. She now joins her family and friends on the adventure of her lifetime. I was overjoyed to receive the birth texts and first photos shared with loved ones. When it comes to parenting newborns and toddlers, “Retrospect is such a beautiful view,” as my spiritual mentor Betty Skinner used to say. As I see another young family heading into the crazy chaos in real time, I trust that they, too, will be gifted with the sustaining grace that God abundantly bestows. One breath at a time, they will be gifted with more than enough love to go around, since God is love (1 John 4:8) and love endures forever (1 Chronicles, 2 Chronicles, tons of the Psalms, 1 Corinthians 13).
Also around 2:15 pm yesterday I was putting together a care package for a friend who is entering back into a different type of developmental womb. For the next thirty days, she is choosing to go to a therapeutic inpatient facility where she will detox from the pain meds which have ravaged her life. Once free from her addiction to opioids, she will be able to feel the full array of her true feelings, learn to manage her back pain with non-addictive methods, and hopefully return to her life with more tangible joy, more sustaining love, and a more reliable sense of God’s peace.
In the hand sewn cloth gift bag for my friend I tucked a copy of The Hidden Life Awakened, a holy book which chronicles the amazing journey of my beloved angel-friend Betty Skinner. As she entered the womb of a psychiatric ward at age 42, Betty pushed through the depths of clinical depression to embrace her personal journey with God to the heights of healed wholeness. In the gift bag I also included these sweet symbols of our soul. A hand painted “Inhale.” A mustard yellow “you feel like sunshine.” And a hand painted “Exhale.”
I simply wrote in the note to my friend, “Trust the part of you that feels like sunshine. Warm. Light. Nurtured by God. I love you, Sue.”
Just as I was hopping in the car to go visit my friend, a loyal SueToYou subscriber from Charlotte, N.C. texted me the following image.
I smiled at God’s timing as I read the words aloud to myself. “One awesome thing about Eeyore is that even though he is basically clinically depressed, he still gets invited to participate in adventures and shenanigans with all his friends. They never expect him to pretend to feel happy, they never leave him behind or ask him to change. THEY JUST SHOW HIM LOVE.”
“I absolutely love this,” I texted back. “Perfect timing. I am driving over now to see a friend who is admitting herself to a thirty day stay at a therapeutic treatment facility. She is too anxious to leave her home, so I am going there.”
After pouring me a glass of tap water with ice, my friend and I relaxed together, talking about her hopes and her fears as she prepares for this life-changing opportunity. She will have no cell phone, no computer, no way of reaching out while she is in Texas, but I told her to please call me for a ride, instead of an Uber, after her return flight home.
After leaving her home, I scribbled a new insight on a piece of scrap paper I found laying in our car. “The sun is always shining. It’s just that sometimes the weight of the world darkens our view.” Simply inhaling and exhaling together, through life’s light and life’s dark, what a joyful privilege it is to just show God’s love.
Taking one breath at time, might we all deepen into abundant trust? God is love and love endures forever.
…Sue…
