Leaving

I don't know if it was Girl Scouts or what, but I learned somewhere along the way to always leave a place better than you found it. In Girl Scouts, this meant that you clean the cabin before you leave, even if it was a mess when you got there.

Today, I leave the place where I've been staying. I am washing the sheets, towels, and dishes, vacuuming, packing my stuff. It makes me a little sad. I love it here. This space has been healing for me, a place of respite. I am so grateful for the friends who let me stay here, so much so that when I think about my gratitude I get tears in my eyes.

This space was full of good karma when I got here. It is a warm and beautiful home, open and light, and you just feel good when you are in it. And to have it all to myself for this week has been a gift like no other.

Coming in to a place so wonderful already, how do you leave it better than you found it? It was very clean when I got here, so I can clean. But I'm not sure how to leave it better. The only thing I can hope for is to leave some of my own good karma, my gratitude, my revelations, my openness, and hope the next residents here will feel those things.

It got me thinking about the lives we touch - do we leave people better than we find them? Are we gentle with the people we meet, knowing they are only ours for a short time?

Sometimes we take for granted the people who should mean the most to us. Those who are closest to us never seem to get the best of us - they get the worst. It's a phenomenon I never understand when I look back and see that I've done (and continue to do) it.

I truly believe that the people in our lives are there for a reason. Sometimes they are only there for a short time, sometimes they are in our lives for a lifetime. But they always bring something that we need in our lives for the time they are with us. Maybe it is a sympathetic ear during a job you didn't like. Maybe they settle in your heart so that even when you go for long periods of time without talking, they are still there, so the next time you connect it's like no time has passed since the last time.

Even people who bring pain into our lives have a reason. Maybe it is to shake us out of our lethargy so that we can find energy for living. Maybe it is to show us through adversity the strength in ourselves. Think about the people who have hurt you - what did you learn from that experience? That is their reason.

Likewise, our gifts are meant for the people whose lives we weave ourselves in and out of. Maybe for a lifetime, maybe for a moment. Are the gifts we share leaving people better than we found them?

I've been singing a song by Sara Groves a lot lately, called "Loving a Person." The part of the song that always hits me is:

"Loving a person just the way they are, that's no small thing.
That's the whole thing."

I'd like to add a verse to that song:

"Loving OURSELVES just the way we are, that's no small thing.
That's the whole thing."

Maybe by loving people, things, and ourselves the way we find them - no matter how we find them - is real love. Loving the dark and the light, the sweet and the sour, the quiet and the loud, the hot and the cold, and finding beauty and appreciation for all of it. Maybe that's how we leave things better than we found them - by loving them just as they are.

...

The photo above is the space where I journaled every morning.