to be.

Do you remember that time when everything was perfect?  For a moment life was exactly how you pictured it and you took a deep breath and tried to capture it in your heart and mind forever?

Then it faded.

As all perfection does.  In time, in memory, in picture, in hope, in dreams, in the onward stamping of life that pushes and pulls.

Like a kaleidoscope ever changing and forming a different picture, a readjustment of shape.

I have found that my life is comprised of the same basic pieces, it merely comes down to how they are being reflected that shows me the beauty, the goodness in each moment.

Some, I miss for days or years and it is only in the removal of time and emotion that I can look back and see any worth in them.  That I can say remember that moment.  Remember even in that really hard time in our life that beautiful day we walked around the lake, we carried our new born, and the sun cascaded through the golden leaves of fall and we breathed the heady scent of hope.  In that moment, we were a family, we were perfectly happy.  We weren't caught up in how lonely we were, how desperately we longed for family, how tired we felt, how inadequate, how lost in the constant and complete changes our lives had taken in that short year.  We just stopped and felt the whisps of time seal a memory.  It was only ours.

Things in my life have changed.  Things that I never ever thought could change, have altered.  I have lost and I have ached and I have watched time rip and grip through this season.  I have shaken like a tree in storm and when I should have breathed deep, have had all the air taken from me.

I never thought I'd say I can make it through, but I can.

But, I'm not the stronger for it.  I was probably more amazing a long time ago.

Now I merely brace for the wind, feel the sand clenching down as the waves roar around.  And I know that I am steady in the midst.  I know that I am okay.

Maybe that was the lesson needing to be learned.  I can lose, and I can ache, I can miss, and I can hope, but in the middle of all of this, when the pieces of my kaleidoscope smash and mix around and all shape and beauty are distorted in the shaking, this is a moment I'll treasure.  This is a breath I can exhale and know that I am okay.  I don't have to be anything, but the me, I am right now.