Sigh in the night.

Yesterday I had a fantastic idea for a blog post.  I even had most of it composed in my head, but the opportunity never arose to get it down and schedule it on Blogger to post today. 

Just before I went to sleep last night I had a moment of panic that the post would slip out of my brain, never to be heard from again. 'That's silly,' I thought.  'I have a mind like a steel trap. A steel trap, I tell you!'  Well sometime in the wee hours between blowing my nose and soothing little blond person back to sleep after a hacking fit and poking my husband so he would stop his head cold induced snoring the idea pulled a coyote ugly.  When I woke all that was left were a few tattered remains in the teeth of the trap.

My previous idea was about writing (at least I'm pretty sure it was).  Now I've decided to go in a little different direction, a little more personal.  Bear with me.

The last few months I've had an ongoing, well, I don't think it would be exaggerating to call it a personal crisis.  It's a struggle sometimes to get from one end of the day to another without closeting myself somewhere out of little blond person's sight and bawling. 

The other night I was laying on the couch (so as to escape husband's snoring) and my brain was pickling itself in a stew of the same old thoughts regarding this crisis.  I realized that what had begun as a new frontier in my neural pathways was quickly becoming a deep and perhaps inescapable rut.  So forcing my thoughts out of the mire, I began thinking of the things in my life that help instead of hurt: my husband, my daughter, my health, the expectation of our new baby, my parents, my writing, the fact that we have a roof over our heads, enough to pay our bills and a little left over to sock away in savings.   Then I had this thought, with six billion people in the world someone, somewhere in that exact instant lost one or more of those things that moments before, in the midst of my angst, I forgot I had.

In this moment, someone, somewhere found out their spouse died or was divorcing them.

In this moment, someone, somewhere lost a beloved child or found out they could never have one.

In this moment, someone, somewhere was laid off or fired from a job.

In this moment, someone, somewhere found out that the bank was foreclosing on their home.

In this moment, someone, somewhere found out that their lifelong dream would never be realized.

In this moment, someone, somewhere found out that one or both of their parents died.

In this moment, someone, somewhere found out that they suffer from a debilitating disease or condition that will affect them in inescapable and perhaps painful ways everyday for the rest of their lives.

In this moment someone, somewhere found out they have a terminal illness and all the minutes they took for granted, perhaps even wished away, have now been reduced to a mere handful, slipping through their fingers as quickly and inescapably as grains of sand.

In this moment, someone, somewhere died. 

I guess what I'm trying to say is that even with the day to day struggles, there is so much to be grateful for and it's all so ephemeral.  Those things we forget to treasure because they're always there can slip from us like a sigh in the night.  And they do from someone, somewhere every moment of every day.  I hope that when, as it inevitably will, that happens to me I'll be able to say that I truly treasured and appreciated every moment that I had that particular blessing in my life, despite what ever else was happening at the time.

And now I'll climb off my soapbox.