I wasn't told, were you?

The word support continues to swirl through my thoughts.
I think of how the women before me used this word. There were many pearls of wisdom we all wished our mothers might have shared with us about what it meant to be a woman, not a girl. What we might need to get through each day, despite what we thought the day might be like.
No generation invented friends who became critically ill, friends whose faced each day in a marriage that was like living on Mars, friends who needed financial help, friends who suffered from depression, friends whose child would never "straighten up and fly right". It is in everyone's world; maybe it is happening to you.
Somewhere in the annals of my memory, there are times I saw and overheard those women friends talking to each other about the pain in their lives and how it was good to talk to someone right then. Someone who would come when the bottom fell out and needed someone to help clean up what had left litter all around. I knew my mother was praying for her friends and sisters. I obviously learned something in watching and listening.
Support is being there. Asking the question when someone calls (not emails) "Is everything alright?" Never diminish the power of the human voice.
Often everything is not all right. It can be a topsy turvy day, week, month, year, years. Be prepared to have something happen which can turn your world upside down, inside out.
Friends trust us with the most intimate parts of their lives. When they need us, they truly need us. Stay tuned and know all the powers of the faith you embrace are there to guide you when you are called upon by a friend.
I was never told by women, of the generation of my mother, how they stayed standing when they often had been falling through pain and confusion and complexity. They stood in magnificent grace; but they never told me the secret to their balance.

Defining Moment

Recently a modern day guru has offered this example as a way to define a decision you might need to make.
After you make the decision, go and fill a clean bowl with warm water and wash your hands, then dry your hands with a clean towel to complete the decision making process.
A couple of thoughts entered into my brain; one, this might be a good thing to do to help embrace and follow through on a serious decision you need to make. Second, this is what Pontius Pilate did after making his historical decision.
Pilate was washing his hands to separate himself from the grave decision he felt he had been pushed into making by a mob (Matthew 27:24). To demonstrate he was not responsible.
Putting away this advice for the future, then on an early Sunday morning filling a bowl and looking into it trying to weigh a decision worthy of this ritual, I was caught with the binding future this
decision may hold me to if I indeed made a decision and then washed my hands in the bowl.
We think "decisions" pretty much abound in our lives. Should I go or stay? Should I call or ignore?
Should I stop hurting myself with useless thoughts or take a step which makes sense?
The desicison demanding a ritual is deep...... it is so important, we must be prepared for the consequences in our life after we make this decision. We might not have control of what will happen if we make this decision.
Humans have made the decisions to marry, to have children, to unmarry, to separate from our children, to stand for a principle when our family members and many friends would walk away from us.
Serious matters for which we did not wash our hands; but possibly should have.
The symbolic washing of hands has power beyond what I could commit to on a Sunday morning.
Every thought of a decision to make bounced in my mind as trite, simple, even only transparent to the decision the bowl of water was worthy of consummating.
These thoughts would not translate into a decision strong enough to wash my hands for.
These thoughts were details compared to a decision with true and trusted consequences.
A decision with a true point of no return in the vast universe of fear versus knowing.
Denial, detachment, derailment.......
I can shake your hand, pinky swear, cross my heart hope to die, sign with my own blood - yet,
wash my hands in a bowl of clean water to seal the myself to a decision?
I confess, I was not able to.

Amazing but true

A very interesting occurrence happened when posting my last writing.
I am now the member of a blog for my job and this personal blog space.
Surprise, surprise, but last Monday, when viewing the job blog, there had
landed my personal blog. It was mind blowing to see this mistake.
It was removed - deleted - by the person in the office who set up the blog, and
no one could understand how it had slipped on to the job blog.
I have therefore been a little timid to write again and try posting on this site not
knowing what cyber space had tricked me into last week.
As they say, "this is a test" and I am going to post this to see if it ends up where I
am hopeful it will, on the Restless Life Syndrome Blog.
Testing 1,2,3..........