Maybe if I had time to worry about the new look in headbands and how much I jogged last week, I would. And things would be different.

There I would be. Chic and trim, jogging with a vintage tie back holding my tousled hair from caressing my rosy cheeks.

Then I would go home to write long entries in my red journal on the beautiful analogies of life and how the sun shone though the daffodils like gold and the newest relationship drama.

No daffodils here.

And my red journal sits untouched while life writes all over me and it’s not in calligraphy either.

Maybe if things were different I would have time to type out blog posts and take pictures, like I want to.

Instead I drink copious amounts of coffee and occasionally wonder how long I will live.

I worry about missing blood work and the med cooler that blew off the dock and running 5 different errands while trying to find the high-risk prenatal who just disappeared and meet the plane on time.

I almost run over the police with the medical truck on the way. And then the tire goes flat.

I feel so strangely disconnected from 95% of my friends.

Sometimes I check Facebook and everywhere there are pictures of new couples , and people bantering back and forth via wall posts and the trail of status’s buzzing about coffee shops, v.ball games, and the weather.

And I feel like I’m peering down a long tunnel, trying to remember what was on the other side.

This side of the tunnel is nice, mind you, and I have no problems filling my days with unique little dramas.

Like flushing an entire toothpaste tube down the toilet.

No lie.

The Amish missionary had to take the whole toilet off its base and turn it upside-down to get the delinquent thing out.

Now people ask if I’ve always tried saving water by brushing my teeth in unlikely places.

And the ice left, finally.  

So there are things like canoeing, fishing, falling in the lake,

and getting hooks stuck in my head.

         

Campfires under the moon and outdoor tea which I drink by the pints, along with my coffee and too much sugar.

And smoked duck. There is smoked duck in heaven, surely.

Though this is not heaven, and everyday I am reminded of how beautiful people can be—and yet how far we can fall into the blackness.

And how mangled lives get when souls are empty–how broken their bodies.

And I fall in love with what my life has been and what it is now. What else can one do, you know, when the contrast is so stark?

There are children all over the world starving and mothers dying too young and floods and earthquakes and rancid TV shows and most of us know heartache without taking a college course on grief.

The worse I see the world, the more I am determined to remain in love with my life.

Not just the moon on the lake and the wind in my hair moments—but the mornings when I wake up exhausted from the bad dream and the afternoons when there are too many kids yelling in one exam room.

There is so little hope to go around these days.

No one seems to be happy.

I have hope.

And that in and of itself gives me reason to be happy.

Even if I cannot remember the last time I cared if my eyebrows looked nice or worried that I’d offended someone in a texting conversation.