Just Be

It had been a bad day, a worse week, and a difficult year in general.  It felt like I was being pummeled by life at every turn, and I had very little energy left to give any of myself with any sort of grace.  Just the night before, I had laid in bed sobbing, "I can't do do this.  I can't do this.  Please help me."  My wells were all dried up and everything in my life felt like absolute drudgery.  After crying myself to sleep,  I woke up and started the day again, mostly because I had no choice.  I felt like a rat on a wheel that couldn't step off because it was just going too fast, and whose legs just kept running with very little brain connection.  I got the kids out the door and began doing my myriad of daily errands and responsibilities, mostly on autopilot, not really fully conscious of where I was going and what I was doing.  Then something remarkable happened.  Remarkable, in the smallest of ways, yet so profound to me.  I was walking up an indoor flight of stairs where at the top, there was very tall, floor to ceiling windows.  As I got to the top step and looked out, everything slowed, almost as if in slow motion.  In front of me was a pristine field of snow with millions of snow flurries coming down, and for an instant, I was sure I could see each snowflake's journey to join it's friends on the blanket below.  I took turns for a while starting at the top of the window and choosing a snowflake to follow, down, down, down to rest on a blanket of crystals.  I smile now, thinking back on it, wondering what the passers by must have thought seeing me transfixed in front of a window, tracing a snowflake's journey down to the ground.  Hopefully, they were too busy to notice me.  I was completely transfixed at the beauty of something so simple and minute as an individual snowflake, and also strangely jealous at the freedom they had to be tossed to and fro in the light wind and that their only responsibility was to be their own individual, beautiful self.  I wanted to be a snowflake, if only for a moment.  And then a whisper came into my mind with very distinct words, "Just Be", it said.  And then I heard it said again, "Just Be."  I thought, "What do you mean, just be?"  The words jolted me back into reality as I pondered their meaning.  I looked out again at the sparkling field and how it represented so many seemingly opposite things:  simple and complex, the weakness of one snowflake, but the strength of an army of snowflakes, how absolutely quiet it was outside, but how blaring the noise of worry was in my head.  I kept saying those words in my head, "Just Be," and slowly, all of my fears, worries, questions, thoughts, and burdens started flowing out of me.  Within a few minutes, I felt light and care free, like the snowflakes were.  I was somehow renewed and energized.  I can't really put it into words even now how or why those words affected me the way they did, or why the vision of the snowflakes falling transformed me like it did, but they were just the words I needed to hear, and just the sight my soul thirsted for,  and they both spoke to my soul and freed me temporarily from the weight of life.  How strange that something that you can't really understand with your mind, can be comprehended fully by your spirit and your heart.  I was so thankful that day that Heavenly Father picked me up, dusted me off, and reminded me that I was loved and remembered, and that everything in my life was going to be just fine.  Since then, nothing much has changed as far as the burdens of life, but when I lose perspective and start feeling like it's too hard and I am overwhelmed, those words come back into my mind along with the vision of the snowflakes falling, and I am made light again.