Some days, you find out what you are made of.  And some days leave you wondering.
    Really, only two bad things happened to me yesterday.  At Six Flags, the rain tore into the little booth where I was working, painting tattoos on people, and soaked the parts of my body not covered by the slicker, while my clothes wicked the wetness into the dry areas.  It was bitterly cold and windy and wet, and I stood there four hours in that little booth.  That was miserable.
    I bashed up my van out towards New Brunswick.  I went into a skid and rear ended someone.  It was horrible at that moment.  No one was injured, but this was something I could very much not afford.  I had only $5 in the whole world, right at that moment.
    But that is all.  I ended the day alive and dry and warm and well loved.  I realized in going to bed that I had not lit the Shabbos candles, so after my prayer, I got up again and lit them with the appropriate blessing, the computer playing Live on Earth (For a Limited Time Only) by Krishna Das.  Very good music, very moving.  I smiled and motioned the light upward into heaven, reaching a peaceful kind of small happiness.
    I snuggled down into bed, letting the music continue.  I felt good at first, thankful for the end of such a long day.  But a sadness stole over me, and I said to my god [1], "Will You please comfort me as You did when I was a child?  I so badly need You to hold me and comfort me and be with me, whispering to me that these hard times are just for a brief while."  I chanted the beautiful strains and said, "Do You know, do You, that when I sing these things, I sing them for You?"  I cried and cried, wanting comforting, sticking my hand out of the covers into the unseasonably cold air, palm toward heaven, wanting it to be held.  I do not remember all that I blubbered into the chest of my god, my Heavenly Parent, but it was a cry that I do not know if god takes an active role in the fates of humans, but that it did not matter now, just please come close and be with me.  I was wracked with a love born of need that came through me, like the love of an infant for its mother from whom nourishment and protection flow.  I sobbed, but soon was soothed, and finally sleeping.
    So, it was a good day, finally, really.  I found myself in the still, late hours where I have wanted to be for some time, where I have not been in many, many years.
 

[1]  Why I use the lowercase g:  I worry that when people see the capital G, they think of the stereotypical old white guy with long beard who sits in fierce judgment.  I do not see my Heavenly Parent that way, and do not wish that idea to be conveyed.