The Biggest Blessings

foto: johnscutter.com

Deep inside its shell, half buried in sand, and peeking out only to be sure no danger was lurking outside, a little crab was almost asleep but still unable to close its eyes. Well, actually, a little boy pretending to be a crab he’d seen at the aquarium when he went with his mother earlier that day was playing hide and seek with the friends he imagined were roaming around the house looking for him. “I wish for a brother”, he thought. Even though his mother had told him that life would be full with a brother or a sister, he wanted a brother, he thought. Someone to wrestle with and play ball and teach to play football and, well, laugh and talk to.

And at that age, now only four, that could only be a boy. And so he prayed.

Looking back at that moment, his earliest memory now fifty years ago, and at the faces of his sister and her family, he wondered how he could have ever gotten it so wrong. But then he remembered he simply didn’t know, but other powers did, and somehow, something that wasn’t his to choose ended up being one of the biggest blessings in his life. He wasn’t praying for a brother but to be happy, and that he was. If only he had known back then, and through all these intervening years, to let go and watch the world unfold around him, inviting it in instead of trying to somehow keep it under his control. But maybe this is how we learn.