If this car were only red, my mother and I think it would be perfect.
“Every cloud has a silver lining.”
I am not fond of that expression. It’s a little trite, as if a small thing that goes right somehow trumps the big things that go wrong.
Don’t get me wrong. I can think of plenty of situations in my life when I experienced unexpected blessing.
But I think that blessing is outside of our circumstances. We are not blessed when things are going perfectly any more than we are blessed when things are going terribly. Rather, we experience moments of spiritual and emotional abundance no matter what is going on in our lives, and that is blessing.
For the last several weeks, my siblings and I have been walking alongside our mother toward assisted living. I’ve been staying at my sister’s house and helping out with keeping Mom company and some of the shopping and work of moving. It’s not an easy time, but moments of abundance have come anyway. Here are a few.
• My nephew singing songs he has written in the basement recording studio. And when he came up and sang some of them for us in the family room.
• Walking with my mother and listening to her random observations about the neighborhood. Like how fine the two of us would look in that convertible for sale.
• Being away from my home church, but feeling at home in my sister’s church.
• Listening to my sister chat with her two daughters who live away from home and admiring how much they want to talk to their mom.
• Gorgeous spring days. Not every day, but most of them.
• Buying my mother’s car and imagining how much fun I’ll have driving it and thinking of her.
What about you? What moments of abundance spring up in your life, no matter what is going on?
