there i was. dragging my feet through the house, solemnly bearing the heavy load of overwhelmth (not a word, but it should be). overwhelmed at my to-do list:

to-do
to-find
to-call
to-see
to-clean
to-fix
to-feel
to-file
to-put-away
to-dump
to-worry-about
to-buy-with-money-we-don’t-have

my former excitement about meeting up for lunch with friends before today turned to fear and dread. i can’t go. i feel so low. buried.

of course i can’t find what i need for pack meeting tonight and at every turn in my search i’m confronted with another pile of things i need to-do-something-about.

i want to go back to bed. too little sleep make all the rest of the tos feel even more heavy, more hopeless. i want to curl up in a ball and wake up to no more tos.

and then it happens.

walking past the bed–resisting the urge to throw myself upon it–towards the bathroom i glance down at the laundry basket erupting with to-files and to-put-aways and i notice a little brown corner of something. gently i tug. out comes the scout shirt i so desperately needed to find so my youngest (you know, the one who also needs new church shoes, new regular shoes and a new church shirt and with whom i have been supposed to have been practicing math facts all summer) can get his arrow of light tonight and transition from blue to brown without once more being humiliated for not being offspring to one of those with-it moms. the ones who have a new scout shirt for every son (neatly pressed and with all the requisite badges and bandelos and banditos (or whatever) neatly sewn on in perfect tiny stitches).

the phrase may be overused, but there are no other words.

tender mercy.

as i continue past the basket intending to hang the crinkly shirt in the bathroom (iron? really?), i smile, glance heavenwards and send up a tiny prayer. cognizant of the fact i have walked past that basket hundreds of times. knowing i’ve looked everywhere for that shirt, even dragging out the two adult shirts from my husband’s closet to see if perhaps one of them is really the one i’ve been looking for.

sure it is a simple thing. but it is no accident. i needed just a glimpse of light, some tiny ray of hope. reassurance that somehow i could make my way through it all.

sent, received and duly noted.

thank you.