Not often, but every once in a while, I read something and it makes me think. Sometimes it makes me cry. Sometimes it makes me want to write. Sometimes it sparks so many memories that I just sit back in my chair and they come flooding into my mind, and I can only sit still and watch the slide show.
The new story over at The Bitter Southerner has just floored me this morning. It's about a singer/songwriter named Jon Dee Graham. I urge you to take a look at it. I also love the audio files in the story, because reading about music is too disconnected. Actually hearing it is great - makes the story more real.
This is my favorite part of the story:
“It’s like, if you live long enough, you will be asked to do the unthinkable. It touches every man in a different way, and it comes at different points in their lives. Your father’s dying and you have to stay there as it happens. Or you have to surrender your child. Or you have to go to the pen. Whatever it is that’s unthinkable waiting for you, what defines us is how we handle the unthinkable.”
AMEN.
Amen to the 10th power.
I've had to deal with some unthinkable things in my life, and each experience has changed me and made me stronger, even though I also felt very heartbroken when the unthinkable was happening. Leaving my friends and family behind and moving away from Augusta as a kid. The death of my beloved grandfather. Seeing my grandmother in a nursing home. Watching my dad die. Getting laid off from my job. Having a hysterectomy. Dealing with my daughter being estranged. [Those are just the ones that come to mind immediately, not all of them.]
I don't know anyone over the age of 50 who hasn't had to deal with the unthinkable. You can either give in to the terror and the heartbreak, or you can reach inside yourself and hold on to your faith in God, leaning on the people who love you, and remembering the truest words ever written, "this too shall pass."
