November 13, 2023
I found it floating face down this morning. I must admit that the sight of it caused me a brief moment of faint sadness. The rest of me was doing a happy dance.
I have been locked in combat with it for most of this week. It and a squad of its kind invaded me overnight a few days ago. The rodent repellant that I use encouraged all but one really bold one to leave. But this one was determined to make my little crib its own home for the winter. It was definitely a mouse but not the usual variety that commonly shows up this time of year trying to escape the winter weather. It was a good bit larger than those common aggravations. When I first saw it scurrying about, I thought it was a young rat. It turned its nose up at those peanut butter baited traps.
There it was when I turned on the light this morning. Floating in the toilet. Expired. Drowned.
I don’t know if it slipped in, couldn’t rescue itself, and became a victim of accidental drowning. Or if the little critter finally arrived at a point of despair and took the plunge to end it all. Either way, it is to my personal benefit. That certain piece of my capacities can now rest from its fixation on eradicating this unwelcomed and uninvited intruder into my home. I win. Again. But of course, I did.
The small things in life will always be the greatest and most important things in life. I am discovering this afresh in so many different areas of life. Grandiose things will always fade in their appeal and attraction. When our worlds are turned upside down, grandiose becomes meaningless to us. But those small things, which are really the great things in life, are the ones that warm our hearts and tug at our deeper emotions.
It’s in this deeper emotional realm that I have of late discovered myself.
It’s not an occasional reality that comes to me now and then. No. Not at all. It is now the realm of emotion wherein I reside. It’s an every waking day reality. And this every waking day reality is life-altering. It doesn’t suggest change. It demands change. And, only by flowing with the changes, do I discover a sense of deep interior peace and contentment. Acceptance. It’s all about acceptance. The more I fight against these imposed changes, the more aggravated and pissed off I get about the circumstances and changes that have been imposed upon me.
I can’t help but to think about something that dovetails into this piece of work that is being fashioned of me. It’s something that Paul wrote where he said, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.”[i]
What I am experiencing in the newly discovered realm of emotions is truly a gift designed by God for those whom he created, for those who, in his kind and merciful forethought, He knew would be suffering the life-altering throes that come at such a time as this in the lives of grieving human beings.
And for what purpose?
Comfort.
First, for me. But it’s not just for me. It’s for all of His created children who, for all of us, at some time or another, are going to be riding on the sharp pointed horns that are part of the throes of this life changing dilemma. And, once discovering and experiencing this comfort, we are then behooved to communicate this comfort to those others among us experiencing the heartache and pains of those damned sharp pointed horns that come around to gore us.
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