LIFE --1 Hour At A Time!

Last year I posted these articles I wrote. I just looked back, and it was 1 week before this date last year. Every year, around the last week of March and the first week of October, my lupus gets really tough. This week I feel like I've been hit by a car and beat up. I am covered with bruises and they come from the inside, (broken blood vessels and inflammation inside) so the inside hurts more than the outside. So I started thinking of feeling like I was being punched around like a piece of clay, and remembered my magazine articles, which won a couple of awards. I hope you will enjoy them!


THE FIRING
(c) Sheila Wall
(please use my name when passing on)
Once I was a bank of clay along a wetted marsh. I was content and silent, enjoying the natural sensations. One day an artist came, and with a strong, forceful knife, he cut me, again and again, until I was a lump of my former self. He took me to a strange place and with torturous strength he kneaded me. He threw me on a potter's wheel. He squeezed me. He punched me. He poked me. It seemed to never end. He bent me and thinned me out. I was no longer anything like I once was. Then the wheel stopped! He held me up to a mirror. I was beautiful! The pain had made me beautiful and useful. Now I could rest, I thought. I had become what I was meant to be. But wait! Where am I going now? To a firing kiln? Fire? More pain? Why, artist, why? "My little pot, you are the shape you'll always be, the design I planned for you, but unless I fire and glaze you, you will not endure. I hope you understand, it will not be for long, and then you will be the model for my other student's pots." And so I endured the fire, with anticipation of what I might someday inspire.


ENJOY THE FALL (c) Sheila Wall
(please use my name when passing on)
Well, you did it. You just jumped off the plane for the first time, but not onto solid ground, into thin air! You quickly assess the situation and think, "Now I can panic, or I can savor the experience. Wow. Up here, I feel no pressure, I feel no pain. I can do flips and somersaults that I couldn't do before. I can fly! I can see my town with a different perspective. I don't worry about hitting the ground, because I know my parachute will hold me."
Many years later you find yourself on solid ground, where everything seems heavier and harder. You feel that you are falling in life. After a long series of small stresses, the one catastrophe that you thought you could never bear just occurred. The weight pushes you to your knees in tears, then in prayer, and you hear a soft, quiet voice whisper to your heart, "Well, you did it. You just jumped off the ledge of security for the first time. Now you can panic or you can savor the experience. Down on your knees I can take the load from you. You will be able to do things you couldn't do before, with my strength. You can see things with a different perspective, through my eyes. Don't you worry about hitting the ground. I will be your parachute. I will carry you to safety. Enjoy the fall." Falling doesn't always mean destruction.

Posted by Bluebirdy at 00:30