After the Balloons

I love the excitement of something new, time spent with someone new, the way I feel when someone takes a moment to appreciate me, lunch with family at Thanksgiving, laughing hysterically AGAIN while driving by the crazily overdecorated trailer in Grandma's town in the darkness on Christmas Eve, hearing from a peer or superior that I've completed a job well done, swinging higher, higher, higher so close to the poofy cloud sky...watching a favorite movie with a friend, playing games with friends (especially when I win!)...oh, and balloons!!! I love balloons!!!

I often find myself on a constant search for those kinds of moments...in hopes that they will be strung together like my favorite set of Christmas lights...you know...the little tiny ones that twinkle best all different colors???...but it doesn't work that way...

I've noticed over time through life that almost everytime I have one of these experiences I strive to find...on the other side is pain...
Inevitably, something unusually hard tends to follows close behind those moments I love so much. I've come to believe it's almost like a rule of the universe. You can't go to the top of the mountain without coming back down all the way to the valley, and it's always raining HARD down there!!! There is never level ground following those high points of joy and excitement...Nope! For some reason it just isn't allowed...

Chely Wright sings a song I love called Deep Down Low. Part of the song says,
"Let yourself go under
Touch the bottom of the pool
Ain't it strange and don't you wonder
How you always come back up and it's so cool...
So don't be afraid to cry get down as far as you can go
Let the river rage on by and the wind blow
If you pay your dues in darkness
You'll appreciate the light
'Cause a deep down low makes level feel so high"

I think it's true that those really painful, hard, low moments make you appreciate the everyday, mundane, blah moments of life that really aren't so bad after all!
So I guess...I've realized that while I certainly enjoy those special things that produce moments I love, I'm thankful most for the level ground. The everyday times when my God walks beside me, in front of me, behind me...and I know it's good to be alive not just on the top of the mountain, or after the rain in the valley, but on level, stable, nothing out of the ordinary ground.