from Gracie

so not sure why i'm not sleeping

i'm exhausted :P

but hopefully after this email

i'll be sleeping like a baaaabby. 

hello.  how have you been?

ya having a good week thus far...

a good day?  i hope so. and i do mean that. 

here's a cake thing: , that should cheer ya up 

if you are bummed. 

hmm, so what i want to share is this:

i was trying to sleep but a thought popped up

so i typed it out, and it starts like this.

all the things i shoulda done.

good movie title, no? haha.

i'm just wondering

what keeps us from doing the right thing.

two things, two people happened to me.

the first, an old lady holding up a broken umbrella

it was raining all day today, it was cold and windy.

her coat wasn't waterproof.  she was wearing a lot of layers.

she was walking very slowly

and she was carrying a backpack and something else under her coat.

and her umbrella just looked so sad.

i wanted to give her my umbrella.  it's big and pretty sturdy.

but i didn't.  i was embarrassed to stop her, to ask.

i was embarrassed of what people might say, might think

because it's not a common gesture.

i walked behind her, next to her, walked past her

then stopped, waited for her, and still couldn't gather the courage.

the second, a tall, large man standing in the subway car.

he gave a long speech, asking for money and food.

he said he had not eaten since yesterday.

i tuned him out.  i thought he was a fake.

a man sitting down gave him a pkg of crackers.

i was holding a mango smoothie in my hands.

it was clutched in both hands on my lap.

i didn't give it to him.  i didn't want to.

he shook his valentine's gift bag

expecting something as though we owed him.

then stopped to hit on the girl next to me.

i thought: what a liar. a cheat. gross.

i still get upset thinking about it

but i wonder, even if he was a cheat, what does that make me?

what keeps us from doing the right thing...

for me it was 

fear, judgment, self-justification, cynicism

such serious words i know, but true i think. no?

i think about Jesus.

didn't he say if someone strikes the rt cheek, to turn to him the other also?

didn't he say give to the one who asks you

didn't he say love your enemies

isn't it said to accept one another, then, just as Christ accepted you

isn't it said there is no fear in love

isn't it said God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power, of love

and of self discipline.

"...for anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen,

cannot love God, whom he has not seen.  and he has given us this command:

whoever loves God must also love his brother." (1 john 4:20-21)

whaddyathink...

so glad i stayed awake this late to share with you!!!!

hope it's encouraging. motivating. 

LAlalalaLoooooovveeee,

grace