Prayers, Worries, Grieving and Sunday Gratitude

It has been a migratory week...or maybe it migrainal week.  Not sure of the right word, but I've had a headache off and on, which has made doing much of anything, including writing, difficult.  I've spent several long hours lying in a dark room, thinking about life, death and everything in between.

That's been one of the offshoots of griefwalking...I've not just been thinking about my mother's death, but I've been going back over my life, taking a long hard look at certain important junctions where I've made critical and life-impacting decisions. 

It hasn't exactly been pretty.

I can see so many places where I've made a truly massive mistake without realizing it until much later, sometimes years later.  I look back over my life, see those moments, and say to myself, "What WAS I thinking?" The truth is that I probably wasn't really thinking at all--I was just acting or reacting to circumstances. If you'd asked me then, I would have said that I was doing what was best, but now, with the wisdom of hindsight, I can see that I wasn't. To use the only phrase that seems appropriate, I can see how I truly f-ed up parts of my life.

And now I have to live with the consequences.

Because I know if I read this on someone else's blog, I'd be wondering "What did she do that was so horrific? Have an abortion? Kill someone? Rob a bank?" I'll try to put some of those questions to rest. No. No. No.

What I did are things like not try hard enough to repair a hurting relationship with the consequences that now I see the loss and feel the sorrow of that destruction.  I made decisions that have had enormous financial consequences, with the result that, now, at a time when many of my friends are happily thinking about retirement and the good life in a few years, I worry about how I'm doing to feed the cats next month.  And, what may be the most difficult to face, I see where I didn't follow my gifts, my heart and passion and now I am having to face the thought that it might be too late to ever use those in the way that God wanted me to.

So I am praying for a second chance, an opportunity to try again.  I'm not sure that it's even possible, it may be that too much water has gone under the proverbial bridge for the relationship to ever be restored. The financial impact of bad decisions may not be able to be undone at my age and in this economy.  I may have gone too far down a path to reverse and use my gifts the way they were supposed to be used.

It may not be possible, but then again, I am reminded that God specializes in the impossible. Who could imagine that a single tiny apple seed could eventually grow a thousand orchards? So this week, I am going to pray (added to that list of prayers that I am experimenting with answers) that I somehow can get those second chances.

If I can, then this time you can be sure that I will pay much closer attention to my decisions and do my best not to blow it a second time.

With that, this Sunday I am grateful for:

1.  Fresh strawberries.
2.  A desktop fountain and its soft gurgle.
3.  Skype and the ability to see as well as talk to my son and his girlfriend.
4.  A forget-me-not that took up residence in one of my pots on the deck.
5. The internet, that allows me to connect with people in a way undreamed just a few years ago.