Saturday, July 5th

 Today has been fruitful!  I made a pot of coffee and drank a couple cups with Jay, which is about my favorite thing in the world to do.  He worries a lot about me,of course, and I wish there was something I could do to alleviate that, but there isn't.  If you love someone, you worry about them

  Some people can worry about others and somehow contain it, as though their life is like St Teresa if Avila's Interior Castle, and they can place that worry in a room in the Interior Castle and close the door on it awhile.  I can't do that, and I never could.  The worry is like a little beast on my shoulder, not an unkind beast but a beast nonetheless, who pats on my shoulder periodically lest I forget to worry!  I think Jay is like that, I sense that about him. In the meantime, the wee in beast doesn't tire of reminding me to worry!  I used to spend at least an hour nightly praying for the well being and safety of my nieces and nephews in particular, but for all my relatives and friends.  But I prayed those beloved boys and girls would grow up without too much trauma and that God would always protect them.  I know that isn't how God works:  you don't pray for your loved ones psychic and spiritual lives and have God magically touch their foreheads and make their lives better and easier.  And while I know God doesn't work that way, I do know you can find blessings in the most everyday things, and I hope that is the case for my nieces and nephews on my family's and Jay's family's sides.  So while my prayers for them may have done nothing, they might have had a positive effect.  I hope so.  I continue to pray like that, but now my beloved nieces and nephews are grown up and married, all but one, so I know they are loved.  That's the purpose of our lives, growing and looking after and loving our families.  I feel relieved to know they are loved, and I also feel a contentedness about their precious lives.  Maybe they will read this and understand that I love them with all my heart even though I can't be there for them.