I’m sharing this from a dear, old friend. Thank you, Sue.
When I read her post this morning, I felt like it was written just for me. The words were exactly what I needed to hear. I’ve been feeling so emotional and so stressed lately. We’ve been planning and preparing for a huge move. Out-of-state. While it will be so wonderful to be close to our daughter and her husband who we miss so much, we will be leaving a home we built and have lived in for over forty years. There has been much heart-tugging for me going through and cleaning out boxes of old pictures, long-forgotten keepsakes, children’s school papers, sixty-year-old love letters between Bill and me and on and on.
I guess one could say that during a pandemic is probably a pretty good time to be doing such things. I might agree. We have been fortunate to have the home and the grounds we love and there is so much to do here that sheltering-in-place has barely been a hardship. Nonetheless, along with the pandemic and the hours spent at home doing things we like to do, there’s been the fear. The fear that, despite strictly taking every precaution possible, we still might get the virus. And, especially at our age, well, the fear is real considering all that has been going on “out there” and thinking about all the what-ifs. Now, I guess someone might say, “But, Andrea, now we have a vaccine! You no longer have to be afraid.” But what would you say if I told you we have not had the vaccine even though we could have? What would you say if I told you I made the decision because I was more fearful of what the vaccine might do?
Whatever your answers, I think you will agree that this piece I am reposting was “written just for me.”
Here it is.
My Name is I AM
“I was regretting the past & fearing the future. Suddenly God was speaking, ‘My name is I AM.’ I waited.
God continued, ‘When you live in the past, with its mistakes & regrets, it is hard. I am not there. My name is not I WAS.
When you live in the future, with its problems & fears, it is hard. I am not there. My name is not I WILL BE.
When you live in this moment, it is not hard. I am here. My name is I AM.’ “
Helen Mellicost~
