Dear Mili (4)

So there I am, another Sun night and a heavy heart not looking forward to Monday. Another week of labour. Time has slipped away when I buried myself in work. Is it worth it? The wicked will not win. I’m still fighting. Hanging in there for as long as my breath takes me. (For those who have not been following this, start from Dear Mili (1) – http://bunnynikisha.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!2DD8C67BBE1120E7!367.entry)   Just as she had expected, she felt lighter at heart.  Rain began to fall, and she took comfort and said: "God and my heart are weeping together." There she sat until the shower had passed.   When she stood up and looked at the sky, she saw little fleecy clouds and the evening sun was shining on them.  And she thought: God is feeding His sheep with roses, why would He forget me? So she started off again.    Now she was easy in her mind, and I believe it was her guardian angle who, unseen, guided her over cliffs and past deep chasms, for how otherwise could she have come through safely? Most likely the angel had instructed a white dove to fly ahead of the child and show her the way.   *****************************   At nightfall she came to a plain, where there were no more thorns and no sharp stones, but only soft moss and grass, which soothed her bruised feet.  Then one by one the stars came out, and looking up at them the child said: "How bright are the nails on the great door of heaven! What a joy it will be when God opens it!"   Then suddenly a star seemed to have fallen to the ground.  As the child came nearer, the light grew bigger and bigger until at length she came to a little house and saw that the light was shining from the window.   She knocked at the door and someone cried: "Come in."   When she went in and looked around, she saw an old man sitting there.    He said in a friendly voice: "Good evening, dear child, is it you? I’ve been expecting you a long time."   He had a snow-white beard that reached down to the ground, and he looked most venerable and kind.    "Sit down, dear child," he said. "You must be tired.  Sit in my little chair by the fire and warm yourself." And when she had warmed herself, he said: "You must be hungry and thirsty, I shall give you clear water to drink, but all I have to eat is a few roots that grow in the woods, and you will have to cook them."   The little girl took the roots, scraped them neatly, cooked them over the fire, and added a piece of the Sunday cake, which made them taste good.  When the dish was ready, the old man said: "I’m hungry, give me some." The good child gave him more than she kept, but after eating what was left, she felt full.   When they had finished eating, the old man said: "You must be sleepy now.  I have only one bed.  You sleep in it." "Oh, no," said the child.  "A little straw on the floor will be soft enough for me." But the old man picked her up in his arms, put her down on the bed, and covered her.  Then she said her prayers and fell asleep.    Early the next morning, when she opened her eyes, the old man was sitting beside the bed and the sun was shining gloriously through the window. "Dear child," he said. "You must get up now and go out to your work; I want you to gather roots for us to eat."   She went happily outside, where she heard more birds singing than she had ever heard before and the flowers round about were so big and beautiful that she had never in all her life seen anything more splendid.   But I suppose you would like to know who the old man with the white beard in the hut was? It was Saint Joseph, who long ago had cared for the Christ Child here on earth; he had known that the good little girl would come to him and had taken her under his protection.  It was because he didn’t want her to be idle that he had sent her out to work.     OK, if bedtime story for children is to cheer them up, I guess the fact that she woke up to work in a gloriously lit day so she will be kept from idling should cheer me up on a Sunday night…I hope to wake up to as bright a Monday as such, and go into work finding all in order and it’s an easy day in the office. And that going to work is better than for me to be idle at home…   (ok, more to come soon)