Dwelling on Beautiful Things

     Today I was feeling frustrated.  In November I had a tear in my right shoulder rotator cuff repaired.  Today marks nine weeks since I had surgery and I still am wearing a sling and  have little use of my arm.  I am doing physical therapy at home everyday and with a therapist twice a week.  Yet I am increasingly aware that this is going to be a very slow process.  I knew this approaching the surgery, yet living the situation is so much more.  

    As I was cleaning the house one handed today (my  non-dominant left hand) I found I was thinking about many things.  I have had much too much time to think the last nine weeks.  I wanted to cheer myself up and I remembered a list I had started on my phone during one of my last frustrated days.  Things that I feel are beautiful.  Not perhaps aesthetically beautiful, but beautiful to me.  I want to share a few of those things here. 

    I always feel hypersensitive to beauty while at church.  Being in my church, any church I have attended, has always been a source of joy to me.  Christmas Eve I was serving at church, at a welcome center, answering questions and greeting members. I felt such happiness watching the small children waiting to go into the service.  Especially the little ones wearing cowboy boots, both boys or girls.  The sound of those small feet tip tapping across the hard floors sounded beautiful to me.  Toddlers in cowboy boots make a noise of pride, they stand a little straighter and walk a bit more purposeful in those shoes, It's beautiful.

    A week or so later, also at a church service, I found something else to make me appreciate pure beauty.  A special needs man, and his father in church.  The man is probably in his 30's and his father looks to be 60's or older.  I see them every time I attend church.  The son sat next to his father, gazing adoringly at him, his hand resting on the back of his father's neck.  He would pat his father's back and just look at his dad with the purest love.  I was touched by his devotion to his father, it seemed as though his father was the center of his world.  It was beautiful.  

    One more instance centers around a man and his dog.  There's an elderly man in our neighborhood.  I really don't know anything about the man.  I think he lives in a rental duplex a few streets south of me.  I don't know him, but I have seen him many times walking his dog.  I like to make up storylines in my head (imagine that)  and in my mind he is a retired farmer. He dresses like one to me. Anyway, the man is elderly, probably in his 80's, and his dog is elderly too, with a very gray face and muzzle.  Both get out almost everyday and walk together, looking like best friends.  Two old guys keeping each other company.  It's beautiful to see.

    There are so many things of beauty around us all the time. I have been noticing more lately.  I do feel frustrated with the forced sedentariness of my circumstances this winter, while waiting for my shoulder to begin healing.  But I can value the opportunity to think and look at the world around me. Definitely something beautiful to dwell upon.