Opening up

As I sit down to the computer I feel wordless, like I don't know what to write but if I just start, something will come out. So here I am. Today I've been wishing I had the ability to continually analyze my life and myself from an outside point of view, like someone secretly looking in with all the wisdom in the world who would then direct me in the right choices to make. I thought about that today in an attempt to figure out my unsettled mood and what I came up with is that once again I've just been trying to do too much all at once thinking I have to do everything all at once. Instead, what I decided to tell myself today is this: that maybe all I'm doing is enough, that it sort of has to be and that what matters most is that the people around me are taken care of, paid attention to and exposed to things that will help them learn and grow. It sounds like I'm just talking about the kids when actually I also mean my husband, the dog, and to a lesser extent the chickens and the cat. They're sort of independent if you've ever had either.

I also learned today that I really need to laugh more, the uninhibited, unafraid, unashamed sort of laughing that is genuine and healing and childlike. All week in the kids' vacation bible school the theme has been service and the overall service project is to create and donate things that will go to local children who are sick in the hospital, often for very long periods of time. Several speakers have come in to share the ways in which they donate their time and efforts, pets and personalities to such children and today we were fortunate enough to meet Rosie, the clown. She's not a fully painted clown, luckily because there were a few children afraid of that type, but rather she's just painted a little bit and a very animated person to boot who clearly loves children and people in general and she had them completely mesmerized along with a few adults.
But I may have been the only adult or child there, I don't really know, who almost teared up several times with Rosie's stories and bubbles and squeaky puppets and magic tricks. I've been on those floors in the hospital, with the sick kids, the ones who've spent too much time there due to no fault of their own and I've seen some scared parents, and tired ones and feel how unjust it is that they're there. In many ways those are some of my favorite patients, but the ones I have the hardest time going to see.

I thought back to some specific cases and imagined Rosie at their bedsides and could see right through her magic tricks directly to the true magic that she possesses and I thought about how much I need her magic too if I really stop to think about it. And how even in the most serious of situations it's okay to laugh, it's okay to lighten up, that things don't have to be so serious and structured all the time,

that it's even okay to wear your clothes inside out and backwards (the dress code for the day) and a cape if you want (like Allie in the picture above) or antennae on your head like Lauren. The youth director called her antenna girl all morning and she loved it.

I also realized as I was putting these pictures together from this morning how we are all like these flowers, that although each of them are beautiful, not a single one is perfect. Look closely, they all are flawed but what would the world look like without them?