News and prayers

What I find most often happening these days when I watch the news is prayer. There are so many terrible thing out there! Abuse, kids beating up kids for YouTube, violence in schools, accusations, shootings, anger. It seems to be all around us these days, so sometimes I wonder what kind of world we have brought our daughters into. And so as I watch I find myself praying, almost a desperate chant sometimes. "Dear Lord, please let my daughters grow up safe, let them not be harmed by these things, let them not suffer, or only suffer as much as they can bear, lift them up andgive them the strength abd the character to endure only as much as they can, or as much as it takes to make them better people. Let them not be the victims of these things, and let them not be the ones who harm others. Let their father and I be good guides to them, to raise them to be good people and loving to others. And most of all, please don't let something happen to us that sends them into the system, to be tossed about like so many of these children. Let them always know our love and support and family. Be their rock and love them too, Lord, and guard them always. Amen."

Joyburst

I had a friend a long time ago who taught me about joybursts. He was only in my life a very short time, and I am convinced the only reason he came into my life was to share this term with me. A "joyburst" is one of those perfect moments when you are so filled with joy or love that you feel like you have to sing or cry or yell out loud or you'll just explode with it. It's such an amazing feeling, and one that I think we need to recognize more often. At the time I met my friend, I was very depressed and struggling to figure out where my place in the world was. Learning about joybursts didn't solve the questions of the world for me, but by defining those moments, he made me really notice when they happened (not very often, then, but still) and enjoy every second of it. He taught me to just let myself fall into it and taste it, and then to let it go without pain when it was done.

I've learned since that joybursts almost never happen in relation to material things (though I suppose if I ever won the lottery that would count:)), but usually happened when I was most myself. I would find myself suddenly, perfectly in tune with the world around me, like noticing the way the wind felt while hiking or driving on a really great road alone. Later, I felt it sometimes when my life started to feel more right, like the first time I heard myself unexpectedly referred to by my married name, or the first time someone really called me a "mom" and talked about "my daughter". Today, I had one of those joybursts sitting in the cafeteria at Ikea. An unlikely spot, I know, but I was sitting eating a lunch my daughter would have enjoyed, and I was watching another mom with her two young daughters, probably 3 or 4. They just seemed right together at that moment, even though one of the girls bumped her head and cried and the other one wanted down... Still something about them made me think about me, and suddenly I realized that would be me in a few years, with "my little girls", "my daughters". Realizing the plural of that phrase just hit me and felt so very good, I almost started crying right there in Ikea with a bunch of executives discussing marketing behind me! I was just so excited and so proud and so thankful that I am here, in such a good place for this moment.

That's just how it works sometimes with joybursts. You enjoy, cry a little in your napkin, and then finish your lunch and buy your daughters a giant stuffed dolphin, just because.