So Small

I’ve had a few people ask ‘Did you really pull over and cry when you heard ‘The Doctor’?’ Ummm…no. That was the song I wanted to use to introduce the blog but it doesn’t reduce me to tissue shedding, salty flavoured messiness. I can see why I might need to clarify. For the record, the song that really started this all off is ‘So Small’ by Carrie Underwood

Lyrically, So Small is beautiful. The words echo and mirror the way I’ve always endeavoured to approach life. But on that day, a history of believing in the truth of that approach, and the reality of applying that truth to my current situation….it’s fair to say those concepts were not meeting up to have coffee.

The song begins…           

What you got if you aint got love?
The kind that you just wanna give away   

Nice lyrics, fairly obvious meaning…love is essential, extra good if you have people to love unconditionally. Yup, I was following her so far.

It’s okay to open up, go ahead and let the light shine through 

‘Ok to open up‘…not so sure about that. I kinda have the feeling opening anything up right now could bring undesirable results. Like tears, screams, or….snot.

Where she started to get me was with ‘go ahead and let the light shine through‘…I thought ‘light, …like the light at the end of the tunnel light?’ or ‘Light, ….like the Light that shines in the darkness Light.’ and that’s about when I pulled the car over.

I know it’s hard on a rainy day
You wanna shut the world out
And just be left alone
But don’t run out on your faith

Sometimes that mountain you’ve been climbing
Is just a grain of sand
What you’ve been out there searching for forever,
Is in your hands
When you figure out love is all that matters, after all
It sure makes everything else
Seem so small

As I listened to the chorus I cried even harder. The past year had been so awful. My Mom passed away (that is sooo another post), our family had been ravaged by grief. I’d watched Emlyn lose the ability to say her few precious words. I’d witnessed her withdrawal from a giggly toddler to a sad, frightened and confused little girl. The endless round of assessments, tests, and opinions while we looked for a ‘name’ we could apply to what was happening with Emmy. The fear it might be Rett Syndrome, and then the confirmation it was. One day I might look back on all this and think it was so small? What if it was a mountain and it forever blocked out the sun?

It’s so easy to get lost inside
A problem that seems so big, at the time
It’s like a river that’s so wide
It swallows you whole
While you’re sittin’ round thinking about what you can’t change
And worryin’ about all the wrong things
Time’s flying by, moving so fast
You better make it count, cause you can’t get it back

Ouch. That hit me. Time was flying by and my children – all of them – were growing older and they needed me. My husband was trying to swim in a swamp of his own pain. He needed me. If the past year had taught me anything it was this…life can unexpectedly transform into something you no longer recognise. Who was to say the transformations were over? Maybe some other awful thing would happen and I would yearn for the days of this relatively manageable amount of horror. Or…. maybe I could be the one to transform. Maybe I could stop thinking about the things I couldn’t change and start thinking about the things I could. I wasn’t sure where to start, but in that moment I decided to try…
Sometimes that mountain you’ve been climbing
Is just a grain of sand
What you’ve been out there searchin’ for forever
Is in your hands
Oh, when you figure out love is all that matters after all
It sure makes everything else
Seem so small