MY VALENTINE FROM THE UNIVERSE
This is the day that many people look to in order to judge their value and worth as a human being. If they receive a Valentine’s Day card or are invited to dinner this makes them feel important. But to just as many people this day comes and goes and it does not matter to them because they may find this day meaningless since they gave up on being “special” to someone else a long time ago. Sometimes Valentines’ Day ends up being full of some unusual surprises.
I remember 7 years ago today being one of those days. I remember coming home in the morning to an empty house, being greeted by my dog and falling asleep, exhausted in an easy chair. I had worked nearly 24 hours straight doing a triple shift as a college security guard. There had been an ice storm which caused my Supervisor to beg me to stay on board due to the fact that other personnel were having problems getting to work that night. Much like this year in 2014 there was thick ice everywhere! And so, I had agreed to work the 7 to 3, 3 to 11 and 11 to 7 shifts back to back.
Before leaving campus, I was told that some flowers had come to the main Security Booth at the Center of campus. A smile came to my exhausted face as I slowly picked my way up the hill to the hub of campus. On arrival, sure enough there were 12 red roses waiting for me. A small card was inside, which I assumed would be from my husband who was out of town for a while in a Blindness Mobility Training Program about 300 miles away. We had been through a tough time for several years now since his near death car accident. Once he finally learned to walk and feed himself again, we were relieved but that was short-lived. Soon he began rapidly losing his sight and the process of learning to be mobile began all over again in a different way. Courage was at a minimum. We had spent every cent of our savings and at this point in time I was working 3 jobs to put one daughter through college and to make up for the fact that hubby had not worked for several years. We still also had a teenage daughter living at home.
I opened the card that came with the roses and was shocked at the short message inside, totally unexpected and, I felt, totally undeserved. I had recently been contacted by a young man, who had located me through the adoption agency where I had placed him some 23 years previous. We had spoken briefly by phone a few months ago and exchanged a few photos and e-mails. I had assumed that had satisfied his curiosity. Now here I stood, tired, cold and crying. The card simply read, “Thank you for giving me LIFE. Love, your son, XXXXX.” I was floored!
I didn’t feel I deserved credit for anything and yet as I stood outside in the cold awaiting a bus to take me home the words played over and over again in my mind. What an honor I thought. To feel so appreciated. A voice from long ago had come to say THANK YOU. That gave me enough adrenalin to make it home somehow.
After falling asleep in my easy chair for about an hour, my cell phone buzzed awaking me from a troubled sleep. I had not heard from my husband who was supposed to come home that evening, had tried calling the training center and got a recording that it was closed due to the weather. I was afraid that maybe he was lost out there some place. He was newly blind, 300 miles away from home and I wasn’t sure how he would get around. The training program coordinators hadn’t invited me to the orientation and I probably couldn’t have afforded to take off from work anyway. He hadn’t learned much yet about cane travel and I was scared for him but so exhausted I didn’t quite know what to do.
Now my cell phone was ringing. I picked up the phone thinking that maybe he had finally found a way to contact me. Instead, it was a young lady whose voice I did not quite recognize. She kept saying, “Happy Valentine’s Day!” “Who is this?” She laughed. “I read about it in school. We don’t celebrate this day in India but I knew it was important to you so I called you.” Again, tears. I knew who this was and again was overjoyed to know that the Universe had send a boomerang of unexpected love in my direction. Several years before I had sent some monies to a group in India who started an orphanage much like the one my grandmother had been placed in years ago. One of the students was calling to thank me for everything she was now able to do with her life because of being able to go to school.
All of a sudden the ice in my heart melted. I knew that the LOVE I had given to others, no matter how small, was always going to come back to me when I least expected it. I hugged my dog, my teddy bear and breathed a prayer of thank you and lifted the fate of my husband to the Universe knowing that if these beautiful things were happening without my even trying that perhaps everything else was going to be okay too.
Here’s to all the little unexpected but super, dooper important little gifts that come back to us when we NEED THEM THE MOST.
Post by
Marie at
2/14/2014 9:06:35 PM