She cried

(love this old picture with the bandaids...face scars...milk residue)

Yesterday my co-worker sat on my couch and cried. It was a short cry, but she cried nonetheless. I'm used to seeing her tears because she's one of the sweetest and most sensitive of all earthly spirits. Her life has been so very hard. Her pain has turned into self-preservation. She's a single mom. She has baggage(don't we all?). She's just a regular gal who has so many reasons to cry.

But this time her crying was different.

We had just returned from a meeting in Bremerton, Wa. We left at 6:45am, missed our Ferry from Seattle to Bremerton at 7:45am by 5 minutes, waited for the 8:45am Ferry, rode 1 hour, and made it to our meeting by 10am. After our 4 hour meeting we spent our time in reverse (minus the missing the ferry part) and had a glorious encounter with I-405 traffic.

Because of her funny anxiety of Ferry rides in general, I tried to distract her by talking.

I talked a lot.

I introduced her to the fabulous musician that IS Damien Rice. His words are so very deep, befitting for our gloomy day and exhaustion and traveling. While we listened I talked about my husband forever. Swooned over him, really. Telling how we met, how we disliked each other at first, how I was a challenge, how we fell in love. I talked about how hard this life is, but did you know that we chose it? Did she know that we knew what we were getting into and that we chose it anyway? I told her she was brave...worth more than she feels she is worth...that she deserves better.

Normally, as her boss, I would never have been so open. But I honestly could not stop. My words flowed. My heart yearned to say more, and so I did.

After we arrived home I invited her in to look at my Christmas tree. I finally put all my decorations up and they really do put such cheer in my humble abode. We gave her some dinner to take home because hubby made too much. My son tackled her like a football player pleading for attention. My husband sang/played his guitar(as a singer she can appreciate it.) It had only been twenty minutes since she walked in my door.

Then she cried.

She said that she has been in so many homes, but none like ours. She had never met people like us. She was in awe that we sacrificed so much to be here. That we work so hard. That we do things unselfishly. That we loved each other. She said it gave her hope. She said she was grateful to know us.

I was shocked. We're so ordinary. We're so dramatic. We're so silly-crazy. We're quite rowdy, for sure! Why would she cry?

And then my husband played one more song that he wrote for me as our children ran wildly around the room. Suddenly, my heart filled with gratitude for him and for our hard but so-worth-it life.

I understood it now. My life, with all it's chaos, is extraordinary, and I cried too.