I am beginning to appreciate events and customs I thought were a bother and a burden in the past. Like birthday parties, weddings, funerals, and even the long cold season of Christmas sometime. I didn’t exactly hate them, but I didn’t really love them either.
Life events take me off my course and make me be with people. People I would otherwise have no reason to interact with and for an introvert that is a tall order. It was my daughters first communion yesterday and I kept thinking back to my own. Mine was special because my father was released from prison a day or so before and my whole family gathered not just to celebrate my first communion but they came to see him. I got a watch. It was golden with a little dolphin on the face of it. My how I loved that watch. I thought it was the greatest gift in the whole world. (I still do).
I had a chance to reflect on yesterday. A chance to reflect on those moments in our lives when we get together for one reason or another. Thank God for those moments. I think if I was left to my own devices, I would just do my own thing, but I can’t. I am always steered to these gatherings and I am always so much better for them, regardless how reluctant I might feel.
It’s amazing really. We live such wonderful and independent lives and don’t take the time to see one another from one week to the next. Sometimes it is years as great distances and responsibilities stand between us, but a wedding, a funeral, or a first communion intersects our lives.
Our life threads intersect for a moment and we are gathered together. It’s really magical. I am glad our calendar is full of days our lives get to intersect. It would be terribly lonely adrift in our own minds and having no reason to make that extra effort to come out and see people we care about.
Cheers to celebrations. Happy ones and sad ones. Cheers because we are together.
Photo credit: https://unsplash.com/@alelmes
