Greetings!
It had been three months since I published my last post 2007 The year of many changes. I knew I should continue to write about the darkest *** of night in 2008, but found myself unfocused to do what I should do. I tried to write by recalling what had happened. It did not go well. Meanwhile, I often ran into 'page unresponsive' while using the old desktop computer for blogging. (I used it for blogging because of the big screen.) Eventually, I let weeks and months go by.
Most mornings I went for a walk in the school field. Since the day I suddenly wanted to capture the magnificence of the sun , I always brought my pocket size Fuji camera with me. It had been a nice summer, and I had taken some wonderful pictures particularly of the sun during June. I captured big, globe like images surrounding the sun in broad daylight. These images could be nothing special, and might just be the reflections of the sun. However, Lens flare or not, pictures of the sun / nature give me joy . I hope to share some of the pictures with you in the future.
One morning in late August, I stood in my favorite spot in the school field enjoying the light summer breeze and appreciating the beauty of nature. Suddenly, two past experiences came to my mind.
I recalled the time my husband and I went to the newly constructed city park for the first time. I had wanted to see white birds / seagulls flying above the body of water. I wondered aloud why there was none in sight. My husband explained that I should not have expected to see seagulls over the artificially made body of water in the park. In disappointment, I closed my eyes and said in my heart, "But, I have come to see the white birds!" Then some white birds came. Soon a lot of white birds came, and put on a spectacular show flying gracefully above the body of water. As I watched, the feeling of awe and gratitude vibrated throughout my entire being. (Re Stories of birds, bees and other signs from the divine )
Then I remembered one afternoon in late 2003. It was a cold, windy and cloudy day. I was supposed to go to the bank and then come back to the restaurant. I started the car, but I just sat there. My heart was heavy.
A few days earlier, a car sped out of a side street and hit our son's car. Luckily, our son was not hurt, but his car was wrecked. His auto insurance did not cover car rental, and we did not have the money to rent a car for him.
Earlier in the morning, we drove our son to work. He worked in an office that was about an hour and a half from where we lived. The round trip took us 3 hours, and we came back to the restaurant just in time to open up. Since we had to take care of the restaurant, I told my son to talk to his coworkers. I wanted him to find out if anyone lived in nearby cities and would kindly give him a ride home. My son was new on the job, and I understood it was an uneasy situation for him. Around noon, my son called. He said none of his coworkers lived near where we lived. I told him not to worry. I said we might be late, but we would pick him up. I knew he got off work around 4 p.m. I talked to my husband about closing up the restaurant an hour or two early to pick up our son. We usually closed at 10 or 10:30 p.m. Most of the time, there was not much business after 8:30 p.m. My husband did not seem to care. He flatly said 'No', and asked me to tell our son to stay in a restaurant to wait for us. I was upset at his response. How could we asked our son to stay in a restaurant for so many hours? I did not call my son.
Sitting inside the car, I thought of my son. I lowered my head and prayed, "Please let there be earth angels to help my son." Suddenly, out of the thick, dark clouds, the sun came out and shone at me brightly and lovingly. I said, "I love you Sun." I looked at the clock. It was 2:22 p.m. At that moment, I knew my prayer had been heard, and everything was going to be alright.
Around 4 p.m., my son called to let me know that he was home! His boss / manager had to go to a plant in a city near where we lived, and offered to drive our son home. He also picked up our son the next day because he had to visit that plant again early in the morning. My son got an apartment in the city where he worked. His coworkers picked him up and drove him back to his apartment until he got another car. (Re In time of darkness, light always shines through )
I usually stood in that spot in the school field enjoying the peace and thinking of nothing. I felt grateful beyond words at the time of going through those experiences, and felt even more so recalling them that morning. I thought of all the earth angels that had kindly lent us a helping hand - my son's manager, coworkers and son's friend who volunteered to pick him up on weekends. I thanked them and sent them my blessings. I thanked my guides and angels for their love and support. I thanked the Divine for the grace in my life. I also understood it was no accident that I recalled the experiences. While love and support were (are) ever present, I myself had been slacking off allowing weeks and months to drift by. It was time to get back to my blog.
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There were only a few occasions that I wrote a post and published it on the same day. It normally took me many days to finish a post. I had to look up words that I was not sure, grammar, and links to the relevant posts.
While I was working on this post, I kept hearing clicking sound from the refrigerator. I talked to my son about it. He thought the sound was normal because the refrigerator went through different cycles. I knew the cycles stuff. I felt something could be wrong because the sound seemed to go on throughout the day. My son said**, as far as he knew, the sound did stop sometimes particularly at night. Therefore, I thought I could be wrong because the refrigerator was pretty new. The apartment maintenance team installed these refrigerators in each unit about one and a half year ago. (** I should have realized my son's immediate response was but his assumption. He did not pay attention to the sound around the house as I did. I was always sensitive to sound.)
I let go of my concern about the refrigerator. I went shopping for groceries as usual. I was quite pleased with my shopping trips because all the things I wanted to buy were available and at very good prices. The next day (a Friday) I wanted to have some ice cream. I found out there was indeed a problem with the freezer / the upper compartment of the fridge. I went to the apartment office. The office was about to close. The woman employee said no refrigeration was regarded as an emergency, and asked me to call for emergency service. (The regular maintenance men were off on weekends.) For the next two days, I was told repeatedly over the phone that a professional technician would come to fix the refrigerator, but no one came. At first, the lower compartment still had cool air, but the refrigerator eventually stopped working completely. I threw away all the TV dinners, two boxes of ice cream, chicken and fish. I wanted to save the whole English roast, beef steaks, pork butt, and shrimps that were somewhat frozen. I asked my son to buy some ice, and he came home with two huge bags of ice. Every four hours during day and night, I refilled the containers that held the meats and shrimps with ice.
On Monday, I went to the office. The head maintenance man said he had ordered a brand new refrigerator for us from Home Depot. At noon, the refrigerator arrived. It was a better brand than the one that broke down. It was quiet and not noisy as the other one. I was glad and grateful. I thought I had saved the meats and shrimps because they looked and smelt fine. In the afternoon, we had a severe thunderstorm, and the power went out around 6 p.m. Over a quarter of a million families were without electricity for days. I ended up throwing away all the meats, and practically everything (e.g. dressing, sauce and sausages) in the refrigerator.
When the power went out that Monday evening, we thought the power would come back in a few hours. Around midnight, my son said he would go to a fast food restaurant to order food. He asked if I wanted to come along. I said "Yes". I looked around while my son was driving. Part of the city was completely dark, and only a few cars were on the road. Somehow, I felt peace. The reactive emotion due to the little inconvinence in recent days totally dissipated.
On the night that the power was restored, I joined a Zoom meeting that I had signed up some days ago. As usual, I did not say anything. The facilitators / moderators lived in other states of USA. During the meeting, the host happened to talk about refrigerator.
She said she and other facilitators (of the group) came together not long ago. One of them said a refrigerator was symbolic to our spiritual journey; once in a while we needed to empty / throw out everything, and filled it with new things; for example, we might not want to use that bottle of dressing again, yet we continued to keep it in our refrigerator; we also did not check if some of the items had passed the expiration dates; a refrigerator was symbolic to our mind and the things we held inside; many of us subconsciously held onto some of our old pain, fear, hurt, anger, sadness and other negative thought, and never let them go; thereofre, it was vital for us to empty our mind or let go of whatever that held us back once in a while, so that the new and good could enter our life.
I smiled hearing these words of wisdom. I could not remember the exact words, but understood how true it was. It was interesting the host happened to relate that after I just emptied my refrigerator.
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It was only until recent weeks that I took out my journals of that time in 2008. In time of chaos, sometimes I did not write much, and left many blank pages in my notebook. As I read my journal, I was surprised that I had actually written down many things in detail. During that time, I felt exhausted, yet had a hard time of falling asleep. Since I could not sleep, I must be up writing my journal. There were many incidents of divine grace and intervention. I was glad that I had not published a post by recalling or with 'the get it over with' attitude.
At the beginning of this post, I put *** after the darkness of night. *** 'Darkness of night' was only an expression. What happened in the early months of 2008 was but one of a few similar traumatic incidents that our family went through because my husband never let go of his blind belief. I learned no matter how dark a situation might seem, it would eventually come to pass. Life goes on. I learned the importance of maintaining my peace.
'It was his life, and it was up to him how to live his life' would be the title of my next post.
Many Blessings,
Q of D
