Spring comes hard to the Midwest. This morning a 29 mile an hour wind buffets oaks, slants rain horizontal, creeps into window crevices, plummets temperatures to high 30’s. It could snow tomorrow! I clutch hot coffee with both hands. Watch from my bed nature’s onslaught. Defying the golden hope of warmer days, benign winds. Defying a spring when all of Nature’s varied greens abound.

My fingers wrap a giant mug, one which Bob would deliver as a Saturday morning gift to me, on a tray, with exaggerated aplomb. Memory warms my fingers, my heart. Memories of how he knew I needed a Saturday morning with no strings to regroup, to contemplate, to review, to meditate, to study, to settle after a long week. We were different that way. He would be up and at it on a Saturday. Might even have cleaned half the garage by the time he brought me my first cup. Might have been in the yard raking beds, spreading dirt, picking up sticks. He was a doer, a hands on person.

And here I am on a dreary Spring day with cascading thoughts as twigs and an occasional branch hit the roof, the deck. I am reading a book called “The Broken Way” by Ann Voskamp. I open the book this morning marked with the last card I got from Bob, Valentine’s Day, 2016. I read the card as I have so many times, over and over, hugging the words to my soul. And then one sentence on this page resonates with me in such a way I can only call it a “God thing”. “A willingness to be inconvenienced is the ultimate gift of love.” I am caught up short. I sip my coffee and lean back on the pillows. The hot liquid burns my throat. (We always laugh about how being Swedish we have to have our coffee HOT even if it scalds the roof of our mouths!) That one sentence personifies most of my life with Bob. He had a servant heart. Did not second guess a request for help, run it by the “how convenient is it for me” grid of his own mind. He could stop mid-task, and just for love deliver a “coffee metaphor” that sustains even two years later.

Teach me to number my days, O Lord, that I may
gain a heart of wisdom.
Psalm 90:12  

April Carlson, MSW, LCSW, LLC