Happy over silly things, then, very, very sad, and seeing God in all of it.

Backstory - My decent in to the need to use reading glasses happened quickly and soundly about 6 years ago.  I had typically had several pair around and would take them off and leave them laying here and there, as most people seem to do.  But eventually I found a pair that I really liked.  They had a cool swirly paint effect on the bows, and they provided enough correction that I could read menu's etc, but not so much that I couldn't see to function in life, so I got where I just wore them, like glasses, pretty much all the time.  I got compliments on them all the time, too.  I tried to get a second pair, but they didn't seem to be available any longer.  (I had bought them about a year, maybe two, before - an even that had been kind of on a whim, because I already had 5 or 6 pair, and I somehow got to the store without a pair, and needed to read something, so I bought a cheap pair, and I ended up liking them the best of all the pairs I had)  I even contacted Foster Grant, to see if I could get some 'left overs' somehow.  Eventually, being just cheap drug-store readers, they broke, about a year ago (by the time they broke, I had originally purchased them about three or four years before).  At that point I decided I probably needed to replace them with the real glasses that an eye doctor had told me I probably needed, so I did.  I would still use readers when on the computer, and when lying in bed to read, and had a favorite pair, with very flexible bows, that are more comfortable, for reading when laying on one's side. 

Two weeks ago, when we packed for our spring break trip to Gatlinburg, I lost them.  I thought I had packed them, got there, couldn't find them in my things, figured they were here at the house, laying on the table by the door or something, and then, also couldn't find them when we got back home, either.  So, I dropped by Walmart, where I had purchased them, and they appeared to no longer be carrying them.  *sigh*  So a few days later. We stopped at Fred's to fill a scrip for Em.  Though we typically just use the drive up, I said "Let's go in, since I have to find a new pair of glasses with flexible bows."  So we went in, and Lon went to fill the scrip, while I looked at the reading glasses display.  I found a pair that 'might work' but was looking further to see if anything better would surface, and low and behold there was ONE pair, exactly like that original favorite pair of readers, AND they were in my correction level.  How in the WORLD did they get there!?!?  No idea - probably someone returned them long after they had bought them, or something...  I had searched every store, including this particular one, and that style of glasses was not available ANYWHERE (thus the e-mails with Foster Grant mentioned above!).  So, we bought them, and the flexible pair that I found there.  I suppose I don't really need them, at this point, since I have my 'regular' glasses, and the flexible pair, but it just felt like God was blessing me with a little 'hey, here is something that I just know will make you happy' moment.  I was very happy.  And I knew, with the progression of events, that lead to us stopping there, then, that God had had a hand in me finding them.  I was supposed to have stopped TWO other times, in the day, to pick up Em's scrip, and had forgotten BOTH of them, so we had driven down early for prayer meeting, which is at 7, in order to catch the pharmacy before they closed at 6:30.  That was the only reason we went in, and didn't just use the drive up - we had time to kill, waiting for prayer meeting, so it seemed like a good time to check for readers there. 

I was just happy.  God cares about little things that will make His children happy. We went on a walk, with some of our time to kill, and while we were walking saw several cats, almost always a pair, one yellow, one black.  We have a yellow cat, that we 'inherited with the house' that used to have a very close friend who was a black cat (Polo, the black cat, disappeared, while we were gone to the wedding last fall) Poor Marco wants so badly to be close friends with one of our other cats, but none of them will 'adopt' him as a 'bestie'.  Several of the cats we saw on the walk seemed to be close, like Marco and Polo had been, and we talked, briefly, about what it is, that is special, about that combination, seems we know several sets of cats that are yellow and black that are especially close friends. 

So, then, on the way home from prayer meeting, we saw the saddest thing.  There was something black laying in the road, I thought it was a jacket or something, but didn't clarify what it was before I saw a yellow tabby cat, who looked very much like our Marco, and also like my precious Max , who is right now, curled up on my chest, as I type!(can you tell I have a special place in my heart for yellow tabbie's?)  This poor, sad tabby was lifting one tentative paw, to step toward the black thing in the road, and looking anxiously as if to say "Why is my special friend laying there, in the road, is he gonna be ok?"  Honestly, I have no idea if the black thing in the road WAS another cat, or if the yellow cat actually WAS his friend, but in the moment, that was what appeared to be happening, and it just struck me as so VERY, VERY sad, the stance of that yellow tabby and the look on his face embodied the sadness of loss SO clearly.  (no, we didn't stop.  Terrible, I know.  I'm not sure why, exactly, Lon was driving. I could have asked him to stop, and didn't.  I guess I was caught up in the sadness of the look on the cat's face, and the message God immediately dropped into my mind about it. But when we were back by there, the next day, the black thing was no longer there, and there was no 'mark' in the road, either, so I'm hoping he was just injured, and got up and ran away, or that it wasn't actually even a cat laying there, and maybe the yellow cat was actually just curious what was laying in the road - though he did SEEM sad... )  Anyway, the look on that yellow tabby cat's face got me thinking.

Being one who is working, still, on getting emotions to awaken inside of me, after my long depression, it was a lot to handle in a few short hours, to be SO happy, and then SO sad.  And then God immediately pointed out to me, that not only does He care about small things, that make His children happy, like replacements for long-lost much-loved readers that are no longer really even needed, but just make us happy, He also has a deep LOVE for ALL of humanity, that has Him looking on, with such deep sadness as we struggle in the mess we call life.  Every time my mind goes back to that picture of the yellow cat's very embodiment of sadness, at the loss of his friend, I get a little TINY piece of a picture of the level of deep concern that God has, at the thought of losing even one of us.  He loves us SO much!!!

The nice thing is, that we also know, that we are only still here struggling, because He has a PLAN, and it involves getting us OUT of this mess.  The deal is already done, which we will celebrate, next weekend.  But He is waiting, to be sure that ALL beings on ALL planets in ALL corners of the universe can clearly see the source of the evil and understand the need to eliminate it, before He does just that, once and for all, and takes us home, to a place were there will be no sad kitties, and...  no need for reading glasses!!