What was the last thing that touched your heart?

Really the very most recent thing that touched my heart was seconds ago.......

gratitude for a wonderful friend as I bit into a scrumptious oatmeal and chocolate chip cookie that she baked for me. 

and then gratitude for my husband touched my heart as I forwarded him an email about chicken coops from Mother Earth News and sipped some coffee that he had made for me just before he left for work. 

when I first woke up this morning, I saw that I had a voicemail from a friend whose youngest daughter went off to college last week.  as I listened my heart was touched by the sound of a wee bit of loneliness in her voice asking me to call her when I have a moment.  I recognized myself in her voice, missing our children a bit, even as we celebrate their accomplishments and growing independence. 

last night, after work, I went to my "academic achievement" class.  I'm taking the class to brush up on my math skills to get them back up to a college level in preparation for taking some college math classes on the way to a degree.  Many other folks are taking this class in preparation for taking their GED (high school equivalency) exam or in preparation for other college courses.  I think it is really a blessing to be able to take this class, not just because of the academic improvement opportunity, but because of the diverse array of people in the class.  in this semester, in a class of less than 20 people, we have folks from 5 or 6 different countries, with several different first languages.  we are students ranging in age from late teens to late 50's.  we are men and women.  we have such diverse ending goals, but we have one common goal and that is to further educate ourselves.  the teacher had us write a paragraph about ourselves & our goals and choose two images to represent ourselves.  one image to symbolize who we are now and one to symbolize who we are at the end of this class.  and then we each stood up and introduced ourselves and shared our words and images.  it felt like kindergarten and also a bit like this gaia website to me (show and tell with words and images - smile).  my heart was incredibly touched and inspired by the things my fellow students shared.

my heart is touched, daily, in so many ways, but recently it felt absolutely torn assunder.  as most of you know, I work at an emergency dispatch center.  a call I took several weeks ago broke my heart and caused me to cherish each moment of life even more than I already did.  initially I thought the caller was reporting a reckless driver or a drunk driver because she said she saw a vehicle driving very erratically, barely staying on the road.  she was able to tell me aproximately where they were, give me a vehicle description and a direction of travel, then she said, "I think something is wrong, I don't know what happened, but I saw the windshield just shatter."  then she said the vehicle was going through a red light, not stopping and a few moments later she said it was stopping at the side of the road.  meanwhile, my co-worker took a call from another person who had also seen the vehicle and stopped as it did and then said, frantically, "I have to go help them." and hung up.  my caller also stopped and soon said something like oh my god they're bleeding.  then she stopped talking to me.  for the next 3 or 4 minutes I heard only screaming.  I didn't know who was screaming or why.  of course we sent help.  police, ambulance and rescue units arrived very quickly.  what they found was that a large rock had fallen onto the vehicle and gone through the windshield, badly injuring the driver and to a much lesser degree injuring a child who was sitting behind the driver.  the occupants of the vehicle turned out to be a family who had been visiting our area, on vacation.  a mom, a dad and 3 kids between the ages of 4 and 14.  the father, who was driving, died of his injuries.  the mother, who was in the passenger seat, had to struggle to get control of the vehicle while trying to calm her children and help her badly, badly injured husband.  she probably saved the lives of herself and her children by stopping that car.  it took her more than a mile to do it, but she did it.  I cry as I type this, as I've cried many times since that day when I think of the loss the children and mom are living with now.  my bus passed by the scene of the accident on my way home that day.  I saw the vehicle with the giant hole in the windshield and 5 mountain bikes on a rack on the back and I cried.  when I opened the gate to our yard minutes later, I was greeted by a scene that could have been straight from tuscany.  a red clothe covered table (made of an old door and some sawhorses) set for two with candles and a bottle of wine decanting.  what a surprise adam had arranged for me.  and what timing?!  we had dinner together in our yard, surrounded by growing things, with the amazing, ever changing, colorado sky above us.  that night I sobbed on adam's shoulder and when he asked me why I was crying the only answer I could give between sobs that shook the whole bed was, "because life is so utterly beautiful and tragic and joyful and painful all at the same time."

The work that I do at 911 (and in the public safey and helping professions in general) has the potential to make a person less compassionate or maybe just less feeling overall.  We can begin to wall ourselves off from strong feelings as a way of "protecting" ourselves.  I think there is a technical term -- compassion fatigue -- or something like that.  what I have discovered is that I don't want to protect myself from these painful feelings.  I want to allow myself to feel them, to go through them.  they are really a gift, allowing me to feel the gratitude for life and to see, hear, smell, taste and touch the beauty that is all around me, more deeply.  breaking my heart open like that---- well maybe that's not quite right.  if your heart is already wide open it doesn't have to get broken open, does it?  I don't know.  but, yes, that heartbreaking event had my heart so wide open, so raw, so unprotected that I nearly fell to my knees when I opened the gate and saw the red tablecloth and the romantic dinner scene my husband had created there.  perhaps each of these events can help a heart grow stronger, the way the leg muscles get stronger each time we pedal up a hill? 

the next day,  my heart was touched by a phone call from a deputy who had been on the scene of the accident, asking how I was doing.  our conversation probably helped each of us heal the wound a little.  later that day I got a call from another deputy who knew I had taken that call, again just checking in to see how I was doing.  I don't really have words to express my gratitude for the amazing people I work with, inside and outside the communications center.  They are incredibly professional and caring and giving.  I feel blessed to know and work with them.  they go above and beyond the call of duty for the citizens of our community and for each other. 

this question has me wanting to go on and on and on, sharing moments that have touched my heart. 

it reminds me of my first impression of siona on the web...  those big, beautiful eyes and the words, "i love". 

I leave you with this.  it always makes me cry and laugh and smile and cry.  :-)  


watch it carefully, there are some sweet surprises in it.  and now that video  ^  is the very most recent thing that has touched my heart.  I have tears running down my smiling face.