sustaining

We woke up to several inches of wet snow this morning.  Fall hadn't really begun yet: it stayed warm and dry until just a few days ago, the leaves have barely begun to change, even the maples, everything is still fully in leaf.  It is so odd to see snow on green, leafy trees and bushes here, incongruous, a glitch in the usual order of things, it's pretty, but at a deep level it just feels not quite right.  Many of the younger, smaller plants couldn't take the weight, all those leaves to capture the wet snow, a lot of broken limbs.

I won't break.  But i'm feeling the weight these days. I suppose this is the natural order of things though:              children trying to grow up, trying to find their own way, and falling as they do, the falls are harder to watch as they get older and the stakes are higher;
      parents at the end of life, that's natural of course, but hard to walk with them through, hard to help the inevitable;
       work for both of us that demands we be really invested and not just that we show up, balancing that against the rest, honoring priorities, keeping commitments...

Him sustaining me through it all: giving strength where i can't bend, bending me where i need to, reminding me that i am His and we are Us, I'm not my own walled off, fortified self.