filling up

I was reading at a favorite blog today and noticed the glass jar on the kitchen table in one of her photos. Heather had shown us the full-to-bursting jar of cookies just a day or two before...it was now less than half full. I found myself swamped by sudden tears, thinking of all the years past filled with baking and filling jars and groaning as they emptied so quickly. And in the same instant thinking of my two sons far away, my husband and I who don't need jars of temptation around to add to our middles, and my mom who probably wouldn't think to reach into a jar to take a cookie as she shuffles around the house. 

Even as I would inwardly groan as the food disappeared so quickly in the days when our home was more full and bustling, I knew great satisfaction and happiness in tending to the needs of growing beings...tending a frail and confused being, no matter how much love is there, is a whole different thing...at least for me, at least for me now. Joy is much harder to come by.

But I will keep seeking it, no matter that it is harder to find. And perhaps I will try filling a cookie jar again and wait to see what happens.