best friends

You know what is galaxies beyond cool? Discovering you are best friends with your children... you don't agree on everything but you respect the others choices and beliefs...

because they're growing in experience and thus wisdom..

because they're on the path of their choosing and gaining ground everyday...

because you have watched them grow through painful times and made it out the other side..

because you've watched them laughing in joy de vivre and marvelled at the grace and beauty of God you see in each one...

because you know that life will throw them curve balls and you hurt for them knowing the grief that comes...but you know they each have the strength to overcome, to stand against the tide rushing in to knock them off their feet.

It is a grand thing indeed to watch your children become teenagers, become young adults with children of their own, become husbands and fathers/uncles/mothers/aunties and still they are your babies and always will be. The day each of them were born is a day that we will never forget, til the day we pass from this world to the next... that memory happened yesterday.

This is a random thought process cherry picked from my mind as I drink my second cup of heaven on earth. And it finds me weepy with love and pride... not for what they've accomplished, not for some status they've achieved within a community.... none of those things brings a true motherly pride as pride of character...

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I have become a sounding brass or a clanging cymbal. 1 Corinthians 13:1

This is a fairly simple yet incredibly profound analogy. If I am blessed with talent but have not love.. what am I?

If I am blessed with the ability to do anything I want to but have not love...what am I?

Empty..desolate...raging....constantly seeking to fill the deep dark hole...

Sound familiar? the man I knew was wonderfully talented in mechanics and logistics and carpentry and building and machines....so very smart and so very purposeless and empty.

They hunt out their prey on a very specific list of must haves...compassion, kindness, empathic, strong, vibrant, a shining light...... your luminescence calls to the starved beast within. Like a vampire they will drain you dry in order to feed the ravenous brute they have become. It pulls and calls to them as inexorably as a flame to a moth.

Pride of Character... it circles round, back to the basic of human kindnesses...or the lack of such. We have all the principle templates within our children to look upon and hold them up as a yardstick to any who may come aknockin.

Dear hearts cling to what is true and right. Cling to to a hope in humanity...each one of us can, in a heartbeat, re-iterate something that happened to us that warmed our hearts to mush...some kindness...some helping hand...some offer of love for the person you are...

Love exists and not only that...it abounds all around us. Stay strong my friends...think on hope, think on a true love.