Monday, December 12, 2011

Offerings of Compassion


This photo was taken at the State Fair of Texas when My Little One was three. We were sitting inside the building where the Quilts & other arts and crafts are on prized display. The Texas sun bore it's heavy beams on our delicate faces, so we decided to escape it a while. Ice cream seemed the perfect invitation to accept, so inside a building we ducked. 

Her curly locks had been pink-hair-sprayed & were drenched in sweat! My face was hotred.  We should've been miserable, yet we were laughing! 

Look how happy my sweetsweet is!! This picture makes me giggle and laugh and melt and ... well, just everything gooey and good. 

The picture was tucked away in a pile of pictures I had out to sort and put in an album.  There are stacks of pictures.  The point is, this photo wasn't out in plain sight.  It was buried in a sea of other photos.  Add to the mix that the sea is now contained in a closet because it was relocated to a room that we recently converted into an office-type room. 

See that sand dollar?  The sand dollar is her own painted artwork.  She painted it over the summer at a little clayhouse business near our home.  I'm not sure where it was before it was offered to me as captured in the photo above, but I know she's been very fond of it and plays with it from time to time.

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My Little One is such a sensitive, tender soul with a heart that is so tuned into mine it's scary (and I wouldn't trade it for the world!).

Several months ago, I was feeling overwhelmed, and this particular day, I couldn't hold myself together any longer.  My Husband and I had closed our bedroom door and I was venting about feeling inadequate.  I wasn't yelling in anger; rather, I was releasing in a very emotional way -- might even call it an unravelling.  This was a pretty unusual event because I don't typically unravel around My Family.  This day, I did; there was no stopping it. 

I was crying the kind of cry where I get all boogery and practically hyperventillate.  The kind where I enter a zone of some sort and don't really have control of what I'm saying.  The kind of cry where I experience a migraine almost immediately after the tears dry. 
 
A brief time passes and I'm calmer, feeling better.  I opened the bedroom door to brave the world again.  On the floor, right at the threshold, before I could even take my first step, was the photo and sand dollar, just as it's pictured above.  Right at my bare feet was this abundant love.  I look down the hallway and she peeks out of a room with worried eyes, seeking answers, seeking returned love.  In a moment of a moment of time, we had an unspoken love flow between us and I felt so validated and adequate.  She cautiously approaches me where my arms were already open, awaiting to embrace her whole being.  And so, she entered, I lifted her up and hugged her to near-suffocation.  We exchanged words of assurance and all was right in the world again....
 
What an incredibly insighful gesture by a five year old.  What an amazing offering of compassion.
 
I am a blessed woman -- beyond measure -- beyond my worth.  And I am ever, EVER thankful.

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