Here is the joy. Here in this moment, this place, this space. And fear is a thief, a joy-monger, launching into the moment to devour the gifts at your feet. You may think fear is not the enemy when it's just soaring in the periphery of your vision. It only takes one glide for it to dive into the present and scare off the kids and birds and leave you alone with it's devious face, it's cackle of triumph.
I hold a turquoise cross tight in my grip, bending it's soft form between thumb and forefinger. I do this because the ache in my hand keeps me present in the moment, instead of soaring off with fear for wings. For emotions are as fickle as the April weather here in Wisconsin, and fear could drop me from a thousand feet high and crush me on the pavement far below. Choosing this moment, with whatever it contains, sometimes isn't so attractive. Last night, in a group, I didn't want to be present. But I grabbed my cross from my purse, and the bite into my palm forced me to stay nailed to my chair, body and spirit. That cross keeps me on the ground instead of floating off into the tornado of grief above me.
I think of the Savior lugging His heavy cross up the hill at Golgatha, Place of the Skull. Did the bite of the slivers into his shoulders striped from beating keep Him on the ground, keep His mind from wandering too far into the future? Was it mindfulness of the weight of the moment that kept Him going that last day? I follow the path, with my small cross in my hand, and the snaking line His cross ground into the dust is sometimes hard to find. I only know it's on the ground, not in the sky, and so I pin myself to moments and find the path now and then, and this is how you get from one place to another. From one emotion to the next. From pain to glory.
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