the glory of the parking lot

it was my favorite moment of the day.
even if i didn't  know it at the time.

and it was an odd one.

for crazy circumstances that no one cares about,
i ended up standing in a parking lot - a sea of asphalt and heat -
on a five million degree day - exploring an insight i had just
had moments earlier.

i had pulled into this parking lot just to make a quick call,
and then turn around and head home.

it turned out to be the meeting spot for my guy and me,
and a place where we stood for way longer than any normal people
would stand in the heat, sharing thoughts.

it was an intense conversation.

it would have to be.

what other kind of conversation would you stop in a five million degree
parking lot for?!

and instead of driving home feeling washed out and beat from the heat and
the sun.....i felt so much better from the conversation and the thoughts.

and i thought about my life.

how there's a lot of intensity to it.
and there's a lotta just 'doin' what you gotta do to make it work' thru it.

and i like that about my life.
even tho a lotta the times i don't know that when i'm going thru stuff.
sitting and back and looking, i really do like that.

when i got home, i sat with a friend's book she's working on. she asked
some friends to read it and do some of the exercises in it.

turned out it fit exactly with the mood i was in. and i snuggled in to do the
first exercise.....it's a visualization kinda thing.....a guided one, where there
was a story to follow and then you kinda fill stuff in the story.

and the coolest part about it was that in my visual,  when someone shows
up to show me the world i had been missing - it's my partner who shows up.

and the amazing thing was - in the visual, where the world could be anything i
wanted it to be  - the world wasn't all beautiful and perfect -
but that was part of the glory of the whole thing.....the triumph of the struggles
that were mixed up in the beauty of life. that was the glory of it. and that's
the word that described it so perfect for me, and the word that came to mind
during the visual - 'glory.' and there he was, showing it all to me.
i finished the visual and thought about it and my 'real' life and where i had just
been an hour ago. 

it's not all the beautiful calm cool perfect parts of life that are the real beauty.
sometimes the real beauty is found in a five million degree parking lot. and
we forget that. a lotta times we forget.


yesterday that parking lot was one of those spots of glory - and it's taken
my partner to be my guide to those spots. and yeah, it was my favorite moment
of the day. and the weird thing is.....i'm not sure he forgets. i know i do.
but i'm not sure he does. which makes him one heck of a guide.