Some things these past few weeks have been weighing heavily on my heart. I am grateful to be blessed with the opportunity to do work that is very rewarding at times. Yet, like most rewards, they don’t come easily. There are hardships, too. And while I try my best to remain positive and view that fictional glass half-full, sometimes I can’t help but letting the gray gloom roll in every now and then.
I have a friend whose loved one is battling cancer. Another who is dealing with crime in her neighborhood. I’ve personally dealt with violence in my community recently. There was another shooting at Virginia Tech yesterday. Two people were found dead in a restaurant parking lot of my hometown this week. My sister is tutoring an adorable 5-year-old boy who is fighting off a nasty, childhood cancer. I hear new sad stories of my underprivileged youth that I work with far too often.
All of these things do make me more grateful for all of the many blessings I have in my life—for my health, devoted family, steadfast group of friends, car, apartment, food to fuel my body, money in my bank account (no matter how little), big warm bed, and SO, SO much more. More than anything though, these things just make me sad. The kind of sadness that makes your heart sink and your eyes well with tears. The kind that stops you in your busy tracks just long enough to offer up a small prayer of hope for all of the stories, the people, the faces that have caused this sadness in the first place.
It’s then, in that moment of prayer, that I too ask for the strength to help these people. To do what I can to make a small change, a minute difference. I try to be a sounding board to my close friends who are struggling. I send them cards. I tell my sister I’m proud of her. I search for a level that I can connect with my students on. I give them my trust, and my respect. I show up each week so that they gain some consistency and reliability in their lives.
This doesn’t always feel like enough. The gloom is steady like the ocean tide, washing in and over me, and then rolling out slowly, with the promise of returning again soon. I’ve accepted this is as a fact of life. But I have decided on endeavoring all that I can to improve the tide, to not let the gray waves crash hard into our shores, but rather roll in slowly, expectedly. Also, I want to do all that I can to create more days of sunshine between the dark days. And to bottle up some of the sunshine while it’s here and sprinkle it around the people I love, to lighten and lift their hearts just when they need it the most.
Here’s to discovering life's concealed silver linings.
xoxo—K
