Broken Figurines
Yesterday I came home from Edmonton from visiting in an absolutely torrential downpour. Twice I pulled off the road because visibility was zero. Phil told me I was in a precarious position because someone could mistake me for a moving car and plaster me. Considering the conditions I saw I had no other choice but to sit there. A sitting duck, in my opinion, is much better than a dead one any day, of course, unless you hunt them.
Fast forward about two hours and you have what happened that you see in this picture. Going around Phil's monstrous recliner that sits near the fireplace, I tripped over his phone charger cord, which is near the cord for the lighted garland that lays behind the figurines on the mantel that's been that way since Christmas. I felt if people have other lighted trees at their home year round that I could have lighted garland on my mantel surrounding my figurines year round. (The two angels Laura gave me, by the way, survived without injury.)
Somehow I remained calm. I mean completely calm. To the point that I, myself, was surprised but figured out easily why. I had just left a pitiful scene, one that I may be headed for some day, and driving conditions that were the worst I'd ever driven in in my life. I had seen life. Real life. Pure life at its rawest. The unadulterated truth in the belly of life you find near the end of it. Life that's made a difference in how you've lived it. A mirror held up to life's fragility and the inevitable. Kelli Cardwell Randolph said it best when she saw this picture the first time last night: "So sorry. I love my Willow Tree angels. But interesting how God brings us through big storms, so the smaller disappointments won't hurt as much. Pretty sure that would preach." Yes, Kelli, it does. I told you to be listening.
I'm sorry too that I amputated my Willow Tree angel's heads and arms and legs and hands last night. But in the big scheme of things that's nothing compared to what could have happened to me, or to the other poor souls driving on I-65 yesterday, or what each of the real-life angels in the nursing home have to put up with--broken bodies that won't cooperate--every day for the rest of their lives. Those are the reasons my perspective changed about broken, temporary pieces of clay and I, myself, didn't fall apart when I broke them.
Fast forward about two hours and you have what happened that you see in this picture. Going around Phil's monstrous recliner that sits near the fireplace, I tripped over his phone charger cord, which is near the cord for the lighted garland that lays behind the figurines on the mantel that's been that way since Christmas. I felt if people have other lighted trees at their home year round that I could have lighted garland on my mantel surrounding my figurines year round. (The two angels Laura gave me, by the way, survived without injury.)
Somehow I remained calm. I mean completely calm. To the point that I, myself, was surprised but figured out easily why. I had just left a pitiful scene, one that I may be headed for some day, and driving conditions that were the worst I'd ever driven in in my life. I had seen life. Real life. Pure life at its rawest. The unadulterated truth in the belly of life you find near the end of it. Life that's made a difference in how you've lived it. A mirror held up to life's fragility and the inevitable. Kelli Cardwell Randolph said it best when she saw this picture the first time last night: "So sorry. I love my Willow Tree angels. But interesting how God brings us through big storms, so the smaller disappointments won't hurt as much. Pretty sure that would preach." Yes, Kelli, it does. I told you to be listening.
I'm sorry too that I amputated my Willow Tree angel's heads and arms and legs and hands last night. But in the big scheme of things that's nothing compared to what could have happened to me, or to the other poor souls driving on I-65 yesterday, or what each of the real-life angels in the nursing home have to put up with--broken bodies that won't cooperate--every day for the rest of their lives. Those are the reasons my perspective changed about broken, temporary pieces of clay and I, myself, didn't fall apart when I broke them.
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