Hell and High water

A friend of mine, who started out as my partner in crime in this community, (we were postulants together) was just received by the Order of St. Helena on Wednesday. I was supposed to be there. It was supposed to be a surprise. I even had a gift for her and everything.

But as the saying goes, all hell broke loose on Wednesday morning. A baby duck was injured by our sometimes duck-eating dog, the power went out during Morning prayer, a tree limb blew down in the school driveway, we had to clear the debris in a torrential rainstorm before the school was evacuated, frozen food had to be ferried to an operating freezer in another building. Only one vehicle was available since the windshield wipers went out on the other one… you get the picture.

I had just finished reading The Alchemist so was looking at these events with a new understanding of omens. Just too many to count for one morning. I used Sister's cel phone (our phones were out too) to call the convent and tell them I wouldn't be able to make it. I was aware of an odd mixture of disappointment and resignation, and noticed how different this reaction was to how I might have behaved even a couple of years ago. I thought of my mom, and how she would say I was a "determined cuss" with a mixture of pride and exasperation. There was a time when neither hell nor high water would stop me in my tracks. That changed somewhere along the way. So the question arises… at what price did I learn to let what is be okay? Maybe that's not even the right question.