It’s 1am.
My son has been up the past two nights, vomiting. Or nightmares. Or something. He’s is my bed right now.
I’m in the bathroom, watching the drip from the ceiling onto the toilet, as it pours torrential outside. The bucket is starting to get full. There are towels all over the floor.
As I sit on the bathroom floor sobbing, realising that I need to change the way I operate to survive, the room suddenly goes dark. The power has gone. It’s suddenly difficult to know what to do with the tears.
The answer is nothing. I just need to do the next right thing. And that is to get to bed and try and get some shut-eye before the hamster wheel starts again in the morning.
I know that tomorrow, no later today, there will be kids and breakfast and snack boxes and patients and a dance class for my youngest and a singing rehearsal for me.
I’ll take it slow, I say to myself, wear life like a loose garment, so I can keep my head when my two daughters invariably start fighting in the morning.
Somehow, I’ll need to find a time for a quick 40-winks, in case this state of affairs continues for another night.
This is life. My life. My glorious messy life.
Next week, I’ll be in Rwanda singing. In the next few days, I’ll go get my booster shot. Tomorrow, I’ll do an energy healing for my grandmother. But right now, it is today. I am here, on the floor, drip drip drip.
I collect myself, say a little prayer, and know everything will be OK in the morning. Everything is OK now.
“God’s grace is on everyone at all times. We do not have the vision to see it. An ordinary man waits for God’s grace, but a devotee sees His grace is everything. Even in the greatest of difficulties, he experiences his Grace.” (Sundarkand 8, Ramayana)
So this is Grace. There is a blessing here. There is something to be learnt. And I am sure that in the morning, I will know what that is.
I feel calm and serene. I wipe my wet face and somewhere in the early hours, I expect I will fall asleep next to my favouritest little boy in the whole wide world.
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