What's In Your Garbage?

I'm not even sure at this point what I will title this post.  It is post Thanksgiving and I know I was present for the whole day, but still feel I missed it. Has that every happened to you? We create these scenarios of warm moments and meaningful connections and the day goes by uneventful and you are left worn out and longing for your bed. Plans were made.  Recipes gathered. Groceries bought. Verbal invites given. Still, my plan never stopped being planned. Do you ever miss the present? I do. I can get so caught up in a plan that carrying it out becomes more important than anything else...even people. After all, I did invite them. How was my focus so lost? It did not happen overnight, but over weeks of change in our house.
Somehow I lost October and November.  I see them on the calendar with a few scrawled words indicating appointments and birthdays, but days do pass into weeks and now I find myself on the doorstep of December. Time was eaten up with hospitals and doctors, phone calls and waiting rooms.  It really was and all the energy that was mine to spend as I wished was expelled on behalf of another. Nursing has never been my forte, but love makes the task much easier...that and the Lord reminding me of all the times he has cared so selflessly for me.
Tomorrow is trash day and as of late I am the bearer of all things heavy as Tommy recuperates from major surgery.  Such will my lot be until mid January. No complaints.  Just fact. Tonight as I hauled ten trash bags (yes, ten) to the curb, I could not help but notice my neighbors' trashes. One had one bag, the other two, and another with none at all.  How can these things be? (Suddenly I am reminded of Nicodemus in John 3 where he asks Jesus how can a person be born again.)
John 3:7-9  Do not marvel that I said to you, 'You must be born again.' The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit." Nicodemus said to him, "How can these things be?" 
Anyway, we are two people who hosted a mere seven others for Thanksgiving. Surely nine people can't generate ten bags of trash.  You would have thought I handed out the bags and said, "Fill 'em up!" We have always said we are the trashiest house on the block.
As I walked away from the bags, my thoughts slowly grazed over their contents. Lives are often revealed by the garbage they emit. There was love in those bags...like leftovers indicating we ate well and scraps from art projects created by my grandchildren. We made paper chains from old Christmas cards and my son painted his daughters' fingernails. We celebrated Bella's eighth birthday and she helped me make Chex Mix. The clock ticks whether or not we are mindful of it. What happened since we last looked at it? Life. It can't always be planned, much as we would like it to be so. Sometimes it just leads the way and we have no choice but to follow.

It consists of highs and lows, sorrows and laughter, productivity and wastelands.
Feet hurt, backs ache, eyelids beg for sleep that does not always come, yet it is all part of living and we are to take the pain that comes with the good.  We do not always get to choose our paths and how smooth they are nor do we decide every direction to take.  Still, it is what we do down the paths we did not choose that matters most...how we acted and reacted to the events around us.
This opportunity to carry my husband's loads only serves to remind me of how much he does for me all the time without complaint or grimace.  I can love him through this.  These bags are loaded with love for my husband, my children, grandchildren and our moms. We were blessed this Thanksgiving just by being together and we accumulated a bit of garbage just to prove it.