On Quiet Grief, & Quiet Goodness …

Can I tell you a secret?  For a little over a week now, I’ve been quietly carrying a private hurt — one I caused myself.

And I won’t explain any more on that subject, except to say that for days now the hurt has been dogging me like a shadow, the way deep hurts often do.

But.

A few days ago I went for a walk, and I thrust my face in an open magnolia bloom.  I gasped in a lungful of its lemon scent …

And it was good.

I walked farther, and fireflies sparked around my ankles.  Locusts whirred in the trees.  I stroked the silken fuzz of a mimosa bloom, and glimpsed for the first time how each baton-shaped pink petal is tipped with gold.

(Have you noticed, the way mimosas fold their leaves up for the night?  Believe me:  all the world sleeps, and starts again).

I walked a little farther still, and suddenly a doe stepped lightly across my path, three spindly-legged fawns following behind.  I caught my breath — oh, God, what beauty, the way their white spots glowed in the dusk, the way their wide eyes stared into mine…

This world is bent and broken… And also, it’s breathtakingly good.  

I’d be a fool not to see. ❤