Wailing For The Simple

For well over an hour, I sat in front of this laptop staring at a blank page wracking my brain for what to type. Though this is often the case (I sit calling on heaven to send words), I thought today, being Thanksgiving and all, words would come easily.  Yet, I sat with seconds transforming into minutes then hours. With nothing.

In the middle of my wordless stance, – my slumped cheeks and chin held between the palms of my hands anchored by my elbows on the dining room table, my daughter’s one year old dog, Chance, scurries over to where I’m sitting. With no hesitation he begins clawing me to pick him up. So I do. Of course I’m thinking he’s going to just sit on my lap, quietly, while I try to figure out what to write before my self-imposed morning deadline.  But no, he wants to stand up on my lap, lick my face, turn in every direction to see what’s on the table, lay on my laptop keyboard. Okay. No. Down he has to go.

He sees a ball, dashes off to get it and runs full speed back to me to play. I throw it. A few times. Each time he brings it back, until he gets bored with the ball. He finds the tug-o-rope. I pull on it with him for a while before realizing I am totally distracted from thinking about what I need to write.

Chance1-9

I moved somewhere else to write, and before long Chance was in the room with me at my new seated place, front paws stretched a quarter of the way under the media center, wailing. What in the world? I eyed beneath the media stand and saw another ball. I looked around the room and saw there were tennis ball everywhere. This ONE ball, however, that is out of his reach has him wailing at top pitch. I get up and get him the ball he could not reach only to hear the wail again in less than sixty seconds. That’s when I realized why I could not put words on the paper.

Because like Chance, I wanted more.

With all I had been given, I was wailing, crying out to God to give me a great story to share, words from on high, (oh, how I don’t even want to say it) so others would like the words. Let me remember, (I dug deep into the recesses of my memory), a happening that would surely resonate with readers. I wailed against everything I had available to me in the moment. A laptop. Electricity. Heat. A teapot. Roobois Chai tea. A husband. Knowledge. Faith. Daughters. A simple home. The ability to read.  To write.  Of a simple life.

Perhaps, I thought, my desire to be and have better and bigger whatevers, is what keeps the words and the thanks from flowing. Maybe, it was time to purge the thoughts, commercials and constant insinuations that big toys, cars, houses, neighborhoods, careers, or clothes, are the substances for which to be thankful, and realize they can at times do nothing more than leave us tenuous and wailing for more.

Perchance today is the day to say Thank You Lord for keeping the trappings of this world at bay, despite the wailing.  To realize that the little, the least, the non-glitzy, the unpopular, the small, the lowly, the cast aside, the unlikely, is of the greatest value, and most worthy to be grateful for.

Thank You Lord, for Love. Thank You for peace. Thank You for language. Thank You for sight. Thank you for kittens, puppies and babies.  Thank You for relationships. Thank You, for the simple life.

“The law from your mouth is more precious to me than thousands of pieces of silver and gold.” Psalm 119:72

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