Walking out side in the spring, sitting on the bleachers to watch an inning of a little league game; seeing the life of little children, touching all the flowers, and listening to the birds.
It is all so beautiful, but the longing for life is overwhelming it is like a longing that can stop me from breathing, or it is like it will actually kill me.
I feel, in a way like I am on the sidelines of life, looking in on everyone’s vitality, and it is all so fleeting, so precious, so real, but so passing, and not so real, like it is all pointing to something I cannot see or touch.
“Even the greatest joys on earth, like love shared, children laughing, spring time, new life, all points to heaven and to god which I cannot have.
It all makes me mourn and long and feel utterly displaced.
Would I feel better if I had a family of my own? Children, a husband to love through the long and lonely days and nights, but no, that also only points to the real life with God ahead, marriage and family are a foreshadowing, a preparation for life ahead.
It all seems so permanent when I think of families so busy with schoolwork, dinner preparations, soccer, and getting up in the morning, but it is all a letting go, a preparation for what lies ahead.
Everyone must face change; growing up of children, and they leave the nest, growing older, and getting more tired and full of years, full of experiences, easy and hard, all beautiful, all life, but oh, so very passing.
My life is not just an observer on the sidelines, but is at the very heart of everything.
Everywhere I turn, there are longing people who are thirsty for a little bit of life and love, always looking, always hoping for brighter, more sunny days, but we can never find enough to fill our thirsty empty souls.
People get excited when they win the lottery, win at bingo, go on a trip, see something new, but these are all temporal things.
Sometimes, especially in the spring, I want to see the beautiful colors, or the flowers or the birds in flight, but I know in heaven, I will see it all, and all the pain of this passing world will be no more.
All the people with all their busy lives will be no more also, and all there will be is eternity, and endless life, abundance and peace and everlasting joy.
Every day, in whatever I do, I offer it to God. I don’t have children or a husband, but I have needy people who depend on me for warmth, home, encouragement, friendship and comfort.
My life is set aside to care for those no one else may want, those who are cast aside, forgotten. Someone left a message on my machine today and said: Sister, please don’t leave me; everyone in my life whom I have loved has left me in one-way or another.
Sometimes I wish just for one day or afternoon, that this pain in my heart would stop, this incessant longing for life and love for the fulfillment of everything. It must be a longing for heaven, since everything beautiful makes me ache with longing.
It fills me with sadness to just think for a second that I am here on earth like a lonely bird on a housetop, crying out in the desert for something or someone, like an owl in the desert, all alone, waiting, watching for the sun to come for the new and final day.
Sometimes this pain is so great, I cannot contain it. It burns in me like a fire, a voracious thirst, a river of joy, a mountain of pain, an ocean of painful love and longing.
I look outside and see children playing across the street; I think about their lives, and all the carefree lives we all might have had as children, and yet, not carefree, some so burdened by hunger, starvation, abuse, war, and yet, the thing it symbolizes to be so carefree like a child, when all you have to think about is how you do not want the sun to go down, because you wish you could play outside in the spring evening forever.
The shadows fall though, and nighttime comes.
Day dawns again, and when one is young, they may think days last forever, but they do not, they pass away in a vapor until all life is gone.
All the old people I visited throughout the years, so frail, eating pureed food from hospital trays, talking to me as I held each of their frail crippled hands in mine, about their lives, and about the aching in their bodies and hearts to just have this temporal life thrown off.
It seems like in my life, all I can ever do for anyone is give him or her a little drink of water; it can ease thirst temporarily, but the thirst for love comes back with a vengeance.
People are so thirsty and so hungry! Please God may I be faithful while living on this earth. Though I may be cut off, so utterly alone, I am united to God in ever shining bliss, for I am united to all humanity.