Small Success Thursday: The Yoke of Living Lightly

Small Success Thursday

This week has been hard. My oldest aunt died Monday night, meaning a trip we'd planned for two of my daughters to go to Texas to visit my mom and brother's and sister's families, had to be suspended.

We registered my oldest daughter for her first year of college and filled out the (ugh) loan papers, and felt the pains of our very oldest spending most of his summer at work or at school.

I capped turning 48 by going to the emergency room for a breathing treatment and gaining back the three pounds I'd lost this summer owing to the steroids and the fat living of a birthday. My brother and his family were supposed to come visit on Saturday, but my sister-in-law suffered a great loss in her immediate family as well, and so again, things were cancelled. Honestly, the whole world felt fragile: rushed, stretched beyond capacity, and in danger of dying.

But this week, I continued walking the ten times up and down my driveway, at the behest of my brother. I made it three times last week, and twice so far this one. Walking up and down, I noticed the lawn. Three trees need to be cut down in our front yard owing to some sort of blight, and there is a glut of strangle weed we need to pull from the bushes before it does damage. In the mail, I got a speeding ticket from one of those snap cameras on the road. And I sighed as it seems we are spending more on things we would not want, even as I'm trying to pare back on all that we have. The Gospel talking about coming to Him, for His yoke is easy and the burden light beckons, especially when the world feels heavy.

So this morning, when I walked, I prayed the rosary, and as I began the Hail Marys, I received what a consolation, though I did not know it at the time. As I went through the decade, petitioning for each of my family members, I collected saints to walk with me, to pray with me, gathering them like a bouquet of flowers for each person. I mentioned in particular my aunt (I did not know at the time she had died). I'd asked that her brother (my dad) be with her as I knew she was dying. And all the weight of the day, of the week, fell away. None of what needed to be done didn't still need to be done, but the edges and the bite of the world could not overwhelm, the yolk of living, had been made lighter.

Coming to Him with one's troubles is a small success, and one we have to repeat every day. But if we do, the yoke will be easy and the burden light.

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