Is It Right?

As I write this, my husband has gone off to work, my children are just beginning to wrest with the warm sheets of their slumber, a fresh pot of coffee waits in the kitchen. Lena Horne and I keep one another company in this room bright with sun and ribbons that sparkle. A snapshot that delivers.

Today, another's child will wake without covers, his mother dirty and sad, his father unrested for fear. They may be cold or wet, too weary to know whether they head north or west. Hunger will grumble in their bellies, to no avail. There is no music.

Is that right?

I'm compelled by some unknown to think about them as I enjoy my day, wondering if He for whom I celebrate would be pleased by me or deeply sad at my sweets and abundance. I wonder, too, if all my other doubts and starts make Him wonder whether I deserve my joy. He'd be right to do so, I'd say.

Tendered into my smile is this worry that I am indeed not worth this good life of songs and ivies. It can't be right. So I imagine new in the day a tuxedoed man with a microphone will pour his regret as my crown and flowers are taken; the crowd's roar will not save me as I bow away from the stage.

If it were true that my sister in the dirt might get my crown I could accept that truth and be away. But what is really true is that she may never be clean, and I may always have this sweetness, neither of us deserving our lot. I am brought to my knees in wonder, worry, and a thanks blurred with tears of ill design.

Among us there are those whose faiths and devotions will divide us, judging, and breaking us apart. If not His message, than another's, is lost, I think. Perhaps my thinking is my poison, the bitter in this otherwise honeyed life. I should take it and make good of it, as best I can, I suppose. When I pray that is it, every time.

"Let the right thing happen, Lord," I pray. I pray it for me and for you, with wishes for love and peace and for all of us, the time to know it. That is right.