A Dream

Good morning! The sun is shining here in Belfast this morning and it blinds me as it shines double from the patch of saltwater I can see from my window....it looks like molten gold this morning. Lord, help me to appreciate the beauty you have so graciously placed around me for my enjoyment! Oh, how I need to relax and allow life to be what it is and what it is to be. Why is this the most difficult lesson for me? I swear I am like a bull at the gate....I see the matador with his red cape and I want to shred that cape, but they will not open the gate. How do you ever charge with the gate shut? Lol...now what would I do if the gate opened? I sound like such a brave and bold soul, but I am not. I laugh at myself at that thought. I am just me. I am shy and reserved and blush at the drop of a hat. I guess like everyone else, this is me at first and then you get to know me and I am comfortable and I open up and I am outright and honest and, yes, even fun....

Well, that is not at all what this blog is about today. I am just thinking aloud. But really, a dear friend requested I listen carefully to their words and I am and it is making me a better person by forcing me through this exercise of patience....thank you, Friend.

On to the dream. I had the nicest dream last night. I was with a bunch of people at some kind of retreat. This group came in and one of the guys took a bunk next to mine and he was bold and had red hair. He was sharing pictures of life and stories and poems in books, just a nice guy. I was intrigued by him and how easily he shared. We were all standing outside talking and he was suddenly next to me. For some reason, I touched him and he was immediately at my side, arms sliding around me and hugging me. It was so natural and felt really nice to have warm arms around me. The thing was he didn't let go, but just stood behind me, arms around me just chatting as though it were the most normal thing in the world. Not a word was said, just a tender gesture. The scene changed and he brought to me a phone with lots of pictures in it and a scrapbook with his life in it, set them on the table I was sitting at and walked away. I began to read and look and learn about this special man...you know what is strange? I could never quite read his name on the book or ask him what it was...there is meaning in that. He wrote poetry about his life and had snippets of notes and pictures that told me who he was. He caught my eye from across the room with a question in it, was I enjoying his information?, I nodded and winked, yes, I was. It was such a strange thing, this dream. He would come by and touch me or talk or hug me and I knew he was mine and I was his, and yet, we knew so little, but it was the most natural thing in the world, he and I. It was nice. I needed that.

Perhaps I never saw the name because this was a message that I don't need to know who he is or when he will arrive, and I don't have to work hard for it, that when it comes, it will be the most natural and easy thing in the world....it will just be....him and me. You know what? I can so live with that.

Then I found this poem about being alone this morning and it makes sense and it is okay to be alone. I don't always love it, but there is much to be done with it and in it. So, I embrace it and move into the molten gold of morning in Belfast.

The Call

Today I received a most extraordinary call at work. It was a man, mid-sixties and full of grace and wisdom. He left me with a blessing that I will carry with me for the rest of my life. I have tears in my eyes even now thinking of his words. He shared with me that he had lost his wife a few years ago after two years of illness. He took care of her those two years, took nursing courses and learned how to. He asked nurses and had them teach him too just how to do everything that was necessary. He said that he fell in love with her on the fourth date, I believe it was....and he remained in love with her until the second she died. He never even held hands with another woman all of those years, he told me.
Then he told me he was out with a friend one night and two women approached them and started talking to them (flirting probably) and he said that he asked them if he could tell them about his friend he was with. They agreed and he said that he told them that his friend here had fallen in love with a woman and married her and that it came about that they were told she had cancer. He said that he took care of her every day. He came home at lunch and breaks to check on her and when she became paralyzed, he would even clean her and the bed when she was unable to control her bodily functions any more. He said, he loved her and cared for her until the moment she died. Then he said to these two girls..."Would your boyfriends clean you up if you pooped in the bed? Would they clean up vomit off of you if you were ill?" He said, "Because if you have to say no to that, then they are not the great men you thought they were and you had better get looking for a better man than that."
He said to me, I don't know about your husband or how he treats you...but go home every night and hold him warmly. He said, "Husbands should kiss the ground their wives walk on, it is just part of being a husband. It is what they should do."
He said that when he got married, he said for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health...and that was what he meant.
By the end of this call I had tears in my eyes....and I prayed to God to grant me a man in my life like this one had been. One that believes that a wife is precious and worth loving no matter what. And I ask Him every day to make me a woman worthy of such a man. And a woman that will never allow that man to forget how precious he is. When that day comes, I will come home every night and hug my man warmly and think of this precious man with words of incredible wisdom.