The news just keeps getting better and better. What the hell? It's not that I'm always expecting bad things, you know. It's just that I have a hard time expecting good. Does that make sense? I have an innate suspicion (carefully tuned and held) that causes me to always look for the dark side, the catch. The falling shoe (or sword). A lot of it is how I was raised to think about life and god and what he/she expected of me in order to stave off the looming disasters of darkness and general decay. So when good things happen, when beautiful things start popping up through the crusty dirt, I am often frozen for several days with my breath caught tight in my throat. Like someone standing at the corner, dressed for business, prepared to run through the busy and dangerous intersection one more time when suddenly a huge, noisy bus bears down and splashes cold rainwater all over that nice, crisp, protective trench coat and then, while I splutter and blink, the doors slide open and I'm offered a ride instead. What? Me? And why didn't you pull up nice and easy, so I could see you coming? That would have saved countless hours of worrying and ironing.
When good things, wondrous things, begin to gather and pile up I start getting nervous, biting at the sides of my nails again, picking at the invisible, enormous pores on my nose, wondering how this will all gloriously and devastatingly explode. Isn't that terrible? I mean, this is no way to raise a child. I certainly am working hard to make my own mother-legacy something a little less intense.
I am grateful, I really and truly am. Underneath. I want gratefulness to become my default mode, where I go first, not third. I am amazed and excited and trying to be as open to grace and goodness as I possibly can. Sometimes I can even believe that it won't all get ripped away from me. I'm trying to believe.
