The Gifts

There was a very dark patch a couple of years ago when the residual effects of grief and anger and exhaustion were keeping me down. It was so complicated to keep up momentum with my own kids that I constantly questioned how on earth I ought to be guiding others, how was it that I could take care of other people's kids when I felt so challenged with my own? It was a tough year with students at school too. I worked for wonderful families who I know trusted me but were frustrated with our class climate. At any rate, it was dark on all fronts and my conviction was pretty well worn.

I'm relentless about revering the role of timing in life. I can remember all the way back to grade school when I was consistently mystified that my challenge spelling words were always showing up in the books I was reading. Perhaps that was the beginning of thinking that timing can't just be ignored. With unpredictable irony, a timely and thundering gift struck me on my daughter's twelfth birthday, at the darkest and lowest interval of that personal storm. It was ugly and rough and delivered with unfortunate sincerity. But it was a valuable gift, one which the record of half a dozen years revealed I was not giving to myself: the gift of release. These words delivered the gift: "You are not the mom I would ever want for my kids." Delivered by the only person in the world with whom I have kids, it floored me into temporary and stunned silence which gave way to the ironic deliverance of release. And I needed that.

I needed that to accept the next gift which came into my life that same week when an old friend at the top of his profession and his game came looking for me from 3000 miles away after ten years of silence. You guessed it, he swept me off my feet with poetry and discourse and comfort and history's news. The attenuation of that gift eventually came along of course, and it was rough in its own right, but it came with great value. It came with a new currency of the heart.

The currency of the heart isn't only measured by what we have but often by what we have lost. It's the reason we waffle between grief and anger for indisputably long amounts of time. It's the reason we fight forgiveness, make concessions, and keep up unending vigorous arguments for years. Hearts need fuel to offset their heartbreaks. Hearts need gifts. It's the cycle that must go unbroken.