One True Thing in the Great Alone

Note: I borrowed this title from two books: The Great Alone by Kristin Hannah and One True Thing by Anna Quindlen. Both examine of the complex nature of family bonds, specifically parent-child, in the midst of struggles, turmoil, heartaches, distance and pain.

And running through this labyrinth of emotions is a force, the one true thing that holds us all together.

“The most beautiful heart of all is the one that can still love even while it bleeds. — **Sherrilyn Kenyon**

I wondered why I hadn’t loved that day more, why I hadn’t savored every bit of it, why I hadn’t known how good it was to live normally, so everyday.  But I must have known all along, because something was always there.   Love was always there.
                                 ----Anna Quindlen

There is a force within all we know, between earth and spirit, between dark and light, between the finite and the infinite, that holds everything together, even us.  
              ---Sarah Dessen

We were made to live out life's questions and to seek.

Early homo sapiens were hunter-gatherers and here we are, still hunting truths, still gathering ourselves together, still reaching for the stars.

In this finite world, between the zigs and the zags of everyday life, we drift into snippets of thoughts. Countless times each day as quick as the sharp reflexive twitch of a buck's ear, we are alerted to life's questions.

What if? What will I do? How will I go on?

With strands of memories running through all the what ifs, these reflective pauses hold more than the breath on which they ride. Our inner life, our great alone, can be a wilderness of unknowns, or it can be more.

***Each Bleeding-Heart flower cluster can hold up to 20 hearts, not unlike the human capacity to love.***

The Infinite Mindset: A Shift in Thinking

Simon Sinek, American author and motivational speaker promotes the "Infinite Mindset". Finite thinkers see endings. On the other hand, those who adopt the infinite mindset enjoy higher levels of trust and confidence as they look beyond a finite endpoint. They do not even see endings. They see beginnings.

Taking this concept further, instead of seeing our in-between pauses as depositories of the 100s of ways to be lost, of problems to fix, or a grief-space where hope is a sliver of slippery dreams, consider each pause in your story a chance to begin to reframe, reflect, and realign to a greater force.

Indeed, we are fishers of thoughts, hunters on the chase in some tacit agreements made since the beginning of time, to seek, to ask, to discover, to traverse and go beyond the wilderness of the unknowns to take the next quiet step toward the one true thing that grabs and knits everything together.

It has a voice.

I am here.

I am waiting.

I am the Sacred Heart that will hold your tears and lift you up.

Red sacred heart ornament with golden cross and roses on stone wall

Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you: for every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened.
         Matthew 7:7-8