Today peace found

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Last night's accomplishment; I love how the elephant is just peeking out and the blue heart buttons too.

Despite an assertive marine layer that over the past few days hasn't permitted more than scattered hours of filtered sunshine, this morning I'm feeling good. Contented. Not quite without a care but certainly quite joyful. The last week or more angst has clouded my heart, yet while mourning lasts a night, morning dawns anew each day.

While I realize some of why I've been blue, other reasons were less clear; one can grumble about the writing or more rightly what book comes next for only so long. And even if I change my mind AGAIN, that's fine. What will be will definitely be and it's not for me to waste time grousing inwardly. Too many good things in this life occur for them to be usurped by what I have no control over.

If that sounds trite, forgive me. Because in this life there are many awful events, and I have no wish to be flippant. Twenty-five years ago my little brother was running on fumes and three days before his twenty-fifth birthday he took his life. Has that looming anniversary fueled my recent stint of the blues? Perhaps. It's difficult to think of him turning fifty; forever he's a young man wholly out of control yet still entwined within me. However today is one that I'll spend cutting fabrics for Halloween quilts, reveling in prints I rarely use. I'm hoping to get three blankets out of that collection, we'll see how it goes. There are chapters to read of the second novel from my current series; I'm planning to release it next month and better to edit any missed errors/typos now than later. What I'd like to write next might land on the table if I can find where I stashed those notes, lol. Then there is a quilt approaching not quite completion but growing nearer to that goal every evening. A Grandmother's Flower Garden EPP project for my youngest granddaughter requires about three more nights of hand-quilting, woo-hoo! I still need to craft the binding strip, might cut fabric for that while slicing through smiling pumpkins and spider's webs. I have greatly enjoyed reliving the hexies basted for this English paper piecing extravaganza, one of the bonuses of hand-quilting. While stitching the hexagons together, I only see the edges of the fabrics used. Every night I work on it, I get to admire the actual prints, like snippets of memory from when I cut them for this very purpose.

A little like recalling someone long dead yet still so meaningful, even if my brother's life was a chaotic mess. A meth addict, also a type 1 diabetic, and I knew he wasn't destined for the long haul. Twenty-five years now seems like a fragment of time, some sliver of this big wide world's tapestry, but he was a part of it for reasons known only to God. I don't presume to understand why he was here, other than to impart upon various lives lessons that weren't fully peaceful but for some distinct outcome. How his death altered me, well, I can't begin to tally the changes, like trying to count the stitches in my granddaughter's quilt, adding up to a whole that might eventually fray around the edges but will stay intact until.... Well, I'll be long gone, none of us live corporeally forever. Yet I know he's waiting for me in a place where pain and trauma are forgotten. Maybe he's wrapped in a quilt made from my prayers, the fabrics of which proffered the gentle balm of love that remains after all these years. It's what comes from my heart with every quilt gifted, every word written. And today I'm immensely grateful for that peace returned. This is what life is about; giving back the blessings given freely amid the tumult. And being aware love will always triumph, no matter what.

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