Sunday Cookies & Company

Sweet, sweet Sunday. Oh how I love the close of Sundays. Sunday has long been my favorite day of the week. Singing, worship, instruction, recommitment, testimony, prayer, reflection, friends, and good food-it seems a perfect combination.

Most Sundays I feel that the previous week has come to an appropriate and timely close and I am well ready to start a new week. This Sunday I wish the new week were not starting already. This previous week has ended ambiguosly. There has been a great close but at the same time, this same closing is not a closing at all. This closing has led me to a wide open horizon. How many times have I faced this same blank horizon? Too many to count. Typically, facing the horizon and imagining the possibilities I would be energized and ecstatic. This time, I face it with happiness and an open mind, but all the while, still with a knawing stomach ache.

At the end of such a wonderfully simple and enjoyable day it seems absurd that it should also be accompanied by a profound stomach ache.

The road is long and I am tired.

I should be grateful to be tired. All of the greats must have lived with constant exhaustion. I should be grateful the road is long. How many more lessons does the road afford me because it is long?

The Lord is good to me and provides me with answers. Answers do not always mean understanding. But by default, the answers help me compartmentalize some of the useless information circulating in my head. The answers teach me what is relevant and what is not.

On Saturday night, another almost perfect day, I found myself longing to be back in the temple of the Lord once more. Circumstances only permitted me to walk about the temple grounds for a few short minutes and bask in the tranquility that exists even outside of the walls. The warm light visible through the windows glowed into the night dark. How badly I wanted to be inside where that light came from, how badly I wanted the same peace that filled my soul just one night before. Oh yes, the peace is still within my heart and even my mind, but more by memory than by way of feeling. I know the Lord expects me to remember my thoughts and feelings from that night. I know that I will need to lean upon them because the road is still long.

But, it is not a road that I am unfamiliar with walking. I walk each step with greater experience than I had before. I am an opportunist and have therefore looked for opportunities of growth and development along the way. I have made myself available to the experiences that transform a person. They have enabled me to walk tall and confidently. I may not know what the road in front of me looks like, but I know for the most part which tools I need to be successful. I am the woman I am presently because my hands are well familiar with those tools. I know them. I practice using them. I am blessed with having a good understanding and working knowledge of them. I am able to live well because of my experiences, knowledge and application of it.

The Lord has blessed me abundantly and has extended to me an even greater amount of grace and mery, as He does with all. However, it is our choices of what we will do with the opportunities of growth and development that will dictate how permanent those blessings remain and are perpetuated.

Now as I continue on my path.... what other skills and tricks of the trade will I learn? haha

Surely, life is both a tragedy and a comedy, but I pity the man who can only see it as a tragedy.