Gypsy Mama. This Friday’s prompt is connect.)
I've decided that I can no longer stand the grit on the floor so I get out the vacuum, determined to eradicate all that rubs my feet the wrong way as I try to go about my business. I haul the loud machine all over the kitchen, sucking up the crumbs from a hundred breakfasts of toast and the dirt from a week of dog. I am a woman on a mission. I keep pushing the boundaries of how far I can drag the blasted machine before I have to stop and find a different outlet. But my singular focus--a clean floor--clouds my awareness and, suddenly, everything goes quiet. I've stretched the cord too far and suddenly, my power source is gone.
How many times have I done this? And how many times, in that moment, have I turned on my vacuum? How many times have I cursed the blasted machine, blaming it for why I can no longer vacuum?
But the real problem is not the vacuum.
It's the disconnection.
Only by reconnecting the cord can the machine work.
When I am plodding through my everyday life, am I the kind of woman who looks for ways to make connections, rather than breaking them? Or am I the the kind of woman who curses the very thing from which I've become disconnected?
I forget, a lot of the time, that my connection with those whom I spend most of my time is
the most important thing.
"Remain in me, and I will remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me
you can do nothing.
If this is the reality in my relationship with God, if the result of not seeking out connection with God is that I can really do nothing, doesn't it follow that the same would apply in my relationship with those who mean the most to me?
When will I see that to seek out the connection is to begin the hard work of binding to another, just as a knot joins two strands together?
