it’s on the days when I can be on hands and knees, cleaning a bathroom, or bent over mopping a floor, and contemplate how it took almost a decade for my edges to be softened, for my selfishness to be peeled back just enough to be ready to welcome that stranger, that fifth child, who always wanted to be held, who cried so much, needed so much of me.
or how it took over two years of knowing that woman, inwardly rolling my eyes at her repeated stories, her outdated ideas, until I found myself one day asking for her advice, realizing I aspire to be like her in forty years.
it’s thinking I’ve arrived in the spiritual life because I can clean a bathroom without being consumed by rage, when it’s really just what You want for me on this particular morning. a glimpse that what You offer me is always, always better than what I grasp for myself.
a prose poem for ya, from the same monday in november when the cleaning of the house and writing poetry went hand in hand.
Glimpses of Joy 