Tapestry of the Mundane

   This past week has been a kind of tapestry of the mundane.  Life just keeps coming at me and for some reason I am keenly aware of it.  It's not a bad thing at all--it's just that sometimes it seems as though things come at you from all directions and none of them are huge or profound, but you just kind of get hit.
   Last weekend my husband and I visited another church where he preached, we met these lovely people, had a good meal and then drove home.  I marveled at how small our world is in the faith community.  Someone comes in for a short visit and there appears to be an almost instant connection, and then you or they are gone. 
   On Monday the work week began and I get involved in the messiness of other peoples' lives.  I watch a relationship fall apart, hear about past wounds that keep getting opened by others or by their own actions, see faces change when they first come into my office and then something is said and the anger or rage is visceral; it's like they become another person.  I hear of addiction, abuse, infidelity, loneliness, fear.  The reward comes when someone says yes to really working on healing, of allowing me to come along side them and work towards the hope that brought them in in the first place. 
   Earlier on in the week I had a diagnostic mammogram and was told I had to have a biopsy.  Normally I would've been completely unglued inside.  Instead I had a peace about all of it.  With my rather odd and somewhat extensive medical history, I cannot remember how many times there has been a seeming reason to fear and then it's either nothing or something to watch that really is just a nuisance. 
   I am interurrupted of my subconscious  anxiety about it nonetheless when my eldest daughter and I have an argument over skype 6000 miles apart from each other.  She asks with tears in her eyes, "Why do you do this?  Why are you picking a fight with me across the world?"  I am momentarily stung by the rebuke but then I remind myself silently that that is not what I did, but since it is her perspective I have to repair that.  I apologize, she says she has to go, I write her an email, she responds and all is well.  But you see, she is even farther away this weekend on an expedition and I long to make sure she really is OK.  I offer up a prayer and hope for the best.
   I go in for the biopsy yesterday and remember the familiar "pop" when a sample is taken.  The memory leaves me momentarily queasy.  A botched bone marrow biospy with my sister holding my hand, nearly faint as she empathically registers my pain and fear.  But thankfully, this time it wasn't so bad and an ultrasound tech, Donna, holds my hand.  My husband drives me to work and I watch another relationship teeter on demise--but she heroically hangs on and agrees to do some serious trauma work.  Good for her, I think to myself.  Afterward I go home, watch a little TV with my husband and an ice-pack, our youngest daughter leaves to babysit and we go to the mall and browse.  We come home and watch a movie (Red Eye. It was OK).
   This morning I woke up to my dog Max wagging his tail, sneezing on me as he tries to lift the covers off my face.  I love when he does this though am puzzled that he seems to get excited and sneeze just on me.  Why not the rest of the family?
   And so this is it.  The mundane of life, the passing of hours and days and years.  As my husband says, "it's a beautiful thing."