Dreams

I just finished a book by Michael O'Brien called Strangers and Sojourners. It was on my list, remember?

[At the moment I am suffering greatly from touching the cookie dough I made and put in a pan with bare hands. I itch so profusely that I almost feel insane. It is the raw eggs, perhaps the raw flour. Oh goodness, it was such a bad thing for me to do! My hands already looked horrible (I have terrible eczema) so now they look like red, swollen, cracked and bleeding sausages.]

Well, the book was really good. I love the man's insight on life as a mother (how he has that insight I have no idea). I could relate to it a lot. [Hold on, my fingers itch---must scratch] It made me feel less alone when thinking about my life as "this is it." I think I have written about this before---or something similar. God teaches me this many many times. Daily, I think. I get so clouded with my own dreams that I do not realize that those things that I think I want are probably not what I should have.

In old age, the woman dies at the end of the book and leaves her husband to reflect as he looks at her dead body:

"Then he saw that she had already laid down a large portion of her life long ago. Piece by piece she had given it away as she wrestled with existence, as her self was absorbed as nourishment into his life and the life of the children and the community. And laid down most piercingly as she abandoned, one by one, the shapes of dreams she had planned. Only to take them up again in other forms."

He put it perfectly. [And now my hands feel ok again---but still burning.]