Reflection of Providence

UGH!!! This feeling - the air slowly seeping from the room, all inward thoughts, people looking at you through a microscope…when did I get so self-absorbed? Sometimes my skin feels too tight – thin and about to burst. I fear their might have been a misprint, a defect, in the manufacturing of me. It is in these moments, when I reach out with the desperate hope of acceptance, and am reminded of the old ways. The path I used to walk in the darkness somehow seems eerily inviting. The fear of rejection is palpable to my heart. I am easily bruised, and very good at keeping the grey purple ache hidden. I seek for intimacy before a bridge for its passing has been built. I desperately need to be accepted. Thank our gracious Lord that I am not who I once was. The things that spill from me are from genuine spaces. However, there is a wrestling that transpires. Sometimes, in the midst of an unkind glance from male eyes, or wrong words spoken, I retreat into my tortoise shell. I hide,

It’s the soft part of the day where the sun blurs colors in halo; all feels warm and inviting. There is a corner seat with a small round table cloaked in a crisp white table cloth. Trimmed daises sit laughing in a vase on the windowsill. An older woman with green eyes sips hazelnut coffee. A weathered journal and Bible lay open under scraps of discarded paper. She people watches, turning the claddagh ring that resides on her left ring finger. There is an older couple sitting atop a park bench. She watches the gentleman take the woman’s hand and kiss the top of her head before he leans back enjoying the daily paper. Young children fly kites in the park - barefoot. Their laughter is a cadence for life. Women and men run along the trail cutting jagged edges along the park’s circumference. It is a beautiful spring day in the halo of the sun. A secluded moment of life fully lived. There is a peace that washes over the woman sitting in a corner seat of the coffee shop, as if all