So What If My Shoes Hurt My Feet

Yesterday I rummaged through my closest for the proper shoes, shoes to match my black pants and white blouse.  I went with black boots because one, it was cold out and two, the heel height was perfect for my always-to-long-pants.  The curse of being five foot four and one-fourth inches tall.

When I walked in the office it felt like a furnace.  Uhg. You want to complain but you don't realizing the right to complain about the hotness in a building is hardly worthy for the day.  The outside temperature was perfect for my long sleeve blouse.  It felt liberating.  As the day rolled on my feet were fighting the notion of being trapped.  My ten toes wanted to twinkle like Fred Flinstone as he foot peddled his car--free and breathing.  Instead my pinkie toe on my right foot was crying I want to go wee-wee-wee all the way home.  When my day was finished the BWFs and I loaded in the truck and drove to the funeral home.  The reason for the black pants, white blouse and black boots.  When the three of us entered through the doors the pain of rubbing leather on my little toe seemed to vanish; vanish with the notion that my temporary pain was nothing compared to the pain of my co-worker's forever broken heart.  Her family's broken hearts.  Laying to rest a son, a grandson , a brother....

As a staff we constructed a beautiful wreath of small hands in colorful papers.  Each of us in the building wrote words from our hearts of condolence to our friend and co-worker.  I started my message with the words of Psalm 34:18  The LORD is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.

I have now sadly watched three friends bury their children.  In no way the natural evolution of life.  It, at no time, has been an easy witness.  As parents we are not to bury our children.  Each of my friend's children left this earth to early, all taken by different cause.  Each mother and father however with the same cry.  Although the cry is different in sound to the ear, the pain of cry is all the same.  Heartwrenching!  A pain I can hardly fathom.

Once I was alone in the truck the boots were unzipped tossed to the side, the pain of the pinch by shoes not welcomed on my feet eased.  The guilt sets in.  The comprehension that my pain had an easy, quick fix can do that.

So next time you put on a pair of shoes that cramp and feel like a confinement...look at your children.  Then thank God that you can stretch your arms out and pull them in close to love them, to kiss them, to hug them, to talk with them, even yell at them.  Realizing never to take their presence in your life for granted.