Peace & Honey Toast

I’m a big believer that honey can go with just about anything: on toast, in coffee, mixed with Grape Nuts cereal, in tea, drizzled over biscuits… I even put it on my blueberry waffles. There’s just something about it that I’ve always loved. Frankly, it’s absolutely divine on a teaspoon… but I try not to do that more than once in a blue moon. I’ve never been a huge fan of bees (just ask my grade school playground monitor), but the hard work it takes to produce that liquid gold has always fascinated me. It’s amazing how far hard work and a sweeter disposition can get you… That attitude was as much a staple of my childhood as the jar of honey in the pantry. As an adult, my tastes haven’t changed much. I still love making things sweeter, but life has become much more about the sweet moments than sweet foods (most of the time)…

Now that I’m older, I’ve found other things to comfort me and make me happy. I still have the occasional drizzle of honey on something, but life is different. At the top of the list of things that make me most comforted are big bodies of water – mainly the oceans and the Great Lakes. I don’t know of anything that makes me feel more at home than feeling sand under my feet as the water gently kisses my toes. It brings me as much happiness and satisfaction as a piece of honey toast did as a child. There’s just something about feeling the breeze roll across water that stretched further than my eyes can process only to gently caress my face as if God himself came across the water to remind me that even though I’m but a tiny speck in the universe, I exist. I matter. I am present. There’s a peacefulness to that… knowing you are part of something that so completely transcends what you’re capable of understanding. There’s a calm in humility – a peace in the acceptance that sometimes in life we can’t understand, we can simply be present and soak in the moments we’re given. The weight of the preciousness of each passing day can fill us as full as we felt after a big meal as a kid… if we let it.

When I faced having to totally reevaluate my life in the wake of a separation from my husband, I found that what I began to miss most in life (other than my children) was the quiet moments. They come in so many forms: destinationless wanderings through new spaces, listening to my children’s thoughts, stopping to notice the details that surround us daily, pausing the business of day to day life enough for snuggle time before bed, and taking the time to reflect on the beauty I never knew I could find in change.

The last year and eight months has brought a great deal of self reflection, a career reevaluation, courage, faith in myself that I never thought possible… So many things are different in my mind and in my heart. As these changes have taken more distinct shape, I’ve realized that I miss writing. That’s what I’ve always been before anything – a writer. What better time in my life to journal my thoughts than now? Any anger and bitterness that I once felt is greatly lessened by time and new purpose. I have found so much joy in this journey of happiness and tears… self-sacrifice and self-discovery… sweet moments and the tides of life. So often these things are largely out of our control. All we can do is allow them to wash over us like the breeze rushing towards us on the water and take in every breath as if it were a bite of honey toast.