Tiny Feet

I stood in the hallway of my home the other week beside the front double door entrance. We have large glass windows set inside the centre of each door which gave me a great view to see out across the lawn, the road, and to the lakeside hilltop. I was in a great position, sheltered by the comfort of being inside, to watch the oncoming storm. It came on quickly, flying across the lake in the form of a white wall of gusting wind. In an instant the waves rose, white caps formed, and then it turned to a big blur of grey. A tree on our property came crashing down; no warning, no gentle fall, just a fraction of a second plunge to the ground. A window shutter was forcefully pulled from the brick exterior of my home. The wind was brutal! Everything was twisting and turning and I was surprised that only one tree fell. I literally felt the wind pushing against the house. The rain came quick and hard and soon turned to pelting hail and even though I was inside, I could feel the sting of those small cubes hitting my skin..
My dog was freaking! My mom was freaking!

15 minutes and the entire thing was over.

Later that night I thought about that fallen tree and how I'd have to clear it away and clean up any other mess from the storm. I thought about all of the other reports that I had heard about, fallen debris, toppled telephone wires and fires that began as a result. I thought about those poor people from Joplin Missouri and all that they had suffered from that devastating tornado. I thought about all the natural disasters around the word and all of the chaos and damage and deaths. It is sad. Life can be so depressing and unfair and challenging.
Here I was cursing over my own lawn tractor needing a new battery and my grass being overgrown. But seriously, aside from natural disasters, we've all had it tough and we've all lost. From the everyday barriers I face due to my disability, family struggles, heart ache and employment woes, no one (I think) would blame me for getting down on myself and saying, from time to time, "my life sucks!" 
Time is an uncontrollable thing and I feel, much more lately, that I have not enough to get done the things I need accomplished. I forgot about a couple of things, responsibilities, that I would normally be on top of. Even this blog, something I thought I'd be able to at least do once a week, has been slipping with lack of spare time. I don't have the time I used to to sit down and write.
Things change, I get that, I am comfortable with that, but I thought as I got older and wiser things would become less hectic and frustrating and not be so rushed. That onslaught of a storm reflected my life and I questioned if I was having some sort of crisis or meltdown in my head.

Four weeks ago today my sister had a very beautiful baby girl. Her first. I became a proud Uncle; proud of this little girl simply blessing us for coming into our lives, into my life.

So in the midst of my snowballing frustration, when I was mumbling profanities and made up words under my breath, (my dog looking at me as if I were a disturbed puzzle that needed to be figured out) when I felt tears forming in my eyes from confusion and lost hope, an image popped into my mind and stopped me short. I cleared my pupils and rubbed my head. I laid in my bed and stared at the ceiling; though it wasn't the ceiling I was looking at. I was staring at those cute, adorable, soft, often moving about, tiny feet. There was no physical picture on my ceiling, just in my head, and it subdued, unraveled and pushed aside everything.
I don't want to say that this image will forever keep me from getting fed up in life or from screaming out (in my head anyway) @*!#$&^^ explicit narratives.  But for the first time, I REALLY saw how easy it is to see just how peacefully beautiful life can be.

I'm sure everyone, or at least I hope, has their own thing, their good luck charm, their reprieve, their outlet. I have often turned to my writing, or maybe even taken time out to go for a walk with my dog, or waited to talk to a friend.... something to work towards getting. I did not think it was quite as simple as letting go, for it, for that serenity, to come in. I found the peace I needed to find in the image of those tiny little feet. An instantaneous gratification! And I know that these feet will grow, but that is part of what makes it so beautiful.
Simple beauty can outshine all that terrible darkness, I think we just need to look past our frustrations to see it. I always thought I knew how to beat back the pain, but I'm learning more all of the time about just how easy it can be. Because that calm, powerful beauty, is always there; even in the toughest of times. I just have to learn how to see it properly. The tiniest thing can overshadow the biggest horror.

Life poses us a challenge; for me, my answer to it is "tiny feet." What's yours?