After really struggling last week between my need to sleep and my desire not to sleep, I decided that this week on my day of spirituality I would spend one day throwing out my to do list and letting go of all the things I "should" do in favor of whatever came to me in the moment.

So after I got the kids off to school, I thought, "I should exercise, but I'd like to sit down and pet the cat and look out the window."  So I sat down with the cat and just relaxed.  Every now and then a thought would come to me and I'd worry about when I should get up or what I should do next.  I told myself that I would know when I knew.  And I sat petting the cat until I was done and it felt like time to go lie down and take a nap.  So I took a nap.  And when I woke up, I didn't quite want to get out of bed yet, so I stayed in bed, trying to trust that I would get up when the time was right.

And when my daughter was finished with school, she wanted to play outside.  So I went outside.  And as I stood there watching her play, I thought, "This day feels so much better than last week.  What if I lived every day this way?  Just doing the next right thing and trusting that I'd know when to do it..."  Which I followed immediately with the thought, "But then nothing would ever get done!"  And I realized that I was fine trusting God to take care of rest and relaxation, but I did not trust God when it came to getting work done.  Sure, God could help me relax and pet a cat, but I didn't feel God was going to be there when it came to getting the dishes done or cleaning the bathroom, which was quite a lesson and one I need more than ever at this time of year.  I hope I can take at least some of that into the coming weeks with me.

Did you do anything this week? Share in the comments or post a link to a blog post in Mister Linky below. And if you want to join in and change one aspect of your life for one day, click over to my introductory post to get more information and a badge.

My daughter Janie ran up to me today, curls bouncing and eyes sparkling, and exclaimed enthusiastically, "Mama, I love you the most of anyone!" Then she thought for a moment and (clearly not wanting to leave her other loved ones out of the picture) tempered that with, "More than anyone outside our family.  I love our family the most!"

"I love you so much too! I love you and Austen and Daddy more than anyone else in the whole world," I replied.

"What about our cat?" asked Janie, "He's part of our family. Don't you love him too?"

"Yes, I love our cat, but not as much as I love you."

"Oh," said Janie, "Do you love your friend JW?"

"Yes, I love JW."

"Do you love her more than the cat?"

"Yes, I love her more than the cat."

"And who else do you love? Do you love your other friends, like Jay and Kelly and other people like that?"

"Yes, I love my other friends too."

"Do you love them more than the cat?"

"Yes, I love them more than the cat."

"Why?!" she asked, clearly shocked at the amount of love that was being directed outside of our immediate household and away from the cat.

"Hm, because the cat is, well, a cat not a person. Cats can't talk to me and have a relationship like people can. So, I don't love cats the same way that I love people."

"Do you love all people better than cats?"

I laughed and thought of a whole slew of people, from the kid who used to shoot spitballs at the back of my head to my high school history teacher to George W. Bush to blog trolls, and said, "No, I definitely love our cat more than some people."

Whew! I sat down today, with both kids finally healthy and off at school, with my husband healthy and off at work, with a house covered in a summer of chaos (which I am steadfastly ignoring) and thought, "I'll write about my daughter's huge tantrum. No wait, my son scaring off evangelicals. No wait..." I opened a fresh page for a new post, figuring I'd just dive in and see what came.

As I paused to reflect, I looked out the window and said, "Why is one of my good hand towels on the ground outside?" Then before I could figure it out (although the answer is probably "my husband grabbed the first thing he saw to wipe something up"), the cat jumped on me and started walking on the laptop keyboard, purring. I shoved it off. It came back. I took my laptop and turned my back to it. The cat jumped on my shoulder. I told the cat, "I know you want attention, but Mama needs to go where no one is demanding my attention." Now I'm safely shut in my bedroom, out of reach of the cat and out of sight of the hand towel, which remains outside on the ground.

And now that I'm here, I'm thinking that I told the cat exactly what I want to do and say. If I close the laptop right now, if I turn off the phone, if I keep the door shut, I can breathe for a minute and no one will interrupt me. Delicious. I'll pet the cat and pick up the towel and write something fabulous tomorrow.

I don't remember how it was I first noticed the little bird huddled at the edge of the sidewalk. Did I hear it cheep or see a faint movement? But there it was: a little chick that had fallen out of a nest somewhere. It was fuzzy grey with bulging blind eyes and one of its legs was twisted unnaturally out beside it. I stopped in the middle of my evening walk and stood there wondering how best to help it. I didn't think I could find its nest or return it there, and besides, it was injured. I certainly couldn't leave it there to fall prey to some other animal. So I scooped it up and carried it home.

Home at that time was in another part of the country entirely: an apartment I was sharing with my then-boyfriend. That relationship fell apart slowly, over a number of years, and it was passing through its own calm twilight just then. He was horrified that I'd brought home a potentially disease ridden little creature to our "no pets allowed" apartment, and I was horrified that he'd rather leave it to the neighborhood cats than take it in for a night.

In those pre-Internet days, I spent all the next morning on the phone looking both for instructions on how to care for the bird as well as searching for anyone who might take it; I called the Humane Society who put me in touch with the Audubon Society who put me in touch with a bird sanctuary who put in me in touch with a man who took in and rehabilitated local wildlife. Then (since this was also before I owned a car) the bird took a bus ride in a cardboard box to meet the man. He identified it as a songbird common to that area, nothing special, but promised nonetheless to do his best to save it, because he was the kind of person who did such things, just like I was the kind of person who went to great lengths to make sure my little charge made it to him so that he could.

In the years since, veterinarians and the Humane Society have been recipients of my frequent phone calls, as I've learned how to play foster mama to everything from injured birds to baby squirrels to feral kittens. Anything small, abandoned and in need of protection that shows up in my path (or attic or yard or general vicinity) gets appropriate interim food and lodging, followed by expert care and medical treatment. My husband, like my boyfriend before, if left to his own devices, would let survival of the fittest play out, but (having heard the little bird story before we started dating) did at least know what he was getting into marrying me.

Still, the contrast between my method and that of those closest to me made me wonder for years (in that self-doubting way of mine) "Who's right?" Each time I would throw myself wholeheartedly into saving some little animal that would hardly be missed (really is anyone of the opinion that we need more pigeons?), I would wonder if my time and money and energy shouldn't be directed elsewhere. (With so many problems in the world, I'm choosing to go at fixing them by staying up late at night swaddling a squirrel?) Then when I began working my recovery, I uneasily wondered if my desire to take in strays, to heal and fix them, was just more codependent caretaking. Would it be healthier for me and better for the natural order of things to leave stray dogs where they lie?

I've spent a good portion of my time today providing and procuring care for the latest in the series of helpless creatures to cross my path. And these questions popped up again, but rather than trying to think my way out of them and find some rational way to measure the worth of a songbird, I checked in with my Higher Power. And I found that regardless of whether or not I can see the importance in what I'm doing, it feels right. It feels right even when the universe doesn't bend to my will and little animals die (as they sometimes do) in spite of my efforts. It feels right even if they live in a world already seemingly overpopulated by their kind. It feels right whether I'm praised for my kindness or maligned for my concern with things that appear so inconsequential. And even though some of my character defects do come up around it (as around nearly everything) it doesn't feel like an act of codependency, but an act of love and kindness.

And I realized today that I've been holding a resentment against my ex-boyfriend, from the days before the Internet all the way down to a time when I can blog about it. I've seen him as a cold, cruel person who didn't want to help a little bird, all while fearing that (without the validation of his actions) that there was something not quite right with the path I'd chosen. Today, as my husband was displaying his usual loving tolerance of antics he clearly didn't quite understand, I saw clearly that some people, people I love, would see a baby songbird on the sidewalk and let the crows and cats have at it. And that's the right thing for them to do; after all, the crows need to eat too, and the universe needs people who will let them. But that doesn't change the fact that I do believe it's also the right thing to wrap the bird in one's shirt and stay up hand feeding it, because the world also seems to need people who are willing to do that for no reason other than that they feel moved to.

When I was a child, I had the best cat ever. No animal past or present could compare. It wasn't that he had a sweet disposition. He was almost universally mean, awful and belligerent. When almost any creature approached him, he'd snarl, hiss, scratch, bite. He would chase away dogs several times his size with his yellow eyes blazing. And it wasn't that he was beautiful. He wasn't. Or perhaps he may have been as a kitten, but I wasn't fond of him then for it to make any impression. When I loved him, he was ragged and scarred. His ears were shredded and mangled from countless battles and his tail had been broken and was permanently bent at the tip.

Nope, what made him special was mean and ugly, and that he loved no living thing but me. As ornery as he generally was, he would purr roughly as he butted my ankles with his head. And while my hands still bear some of the scars he gave me in accidental and instinctive response to our games, he was gentle for me like he was for no other. He was irretrievably broken to the world and it was broken to him, but he and I loved and understood each other, fiercely.

My current cat is sleeping beside me now. He's stunningly beautiful and friendly to everyone, he's both regal and loving. He's never scratched me, even in play. And yet he's just a decent cat, while the thin, jagged white lines on my hands from wounds thoughtlessly inflicted by an animal long gone are still lovingly treasured. I see in that awful, long-gone old alley cat the mirror for all I wanted in human romance: a broken creature only I could fix and fierce mutual love that denies and excludes all the rest of the world. And I wonder if, knowing how the search for that kind of relationship turned out and knowing all the work I've done since, I would love a cat like that today.

Yes, he may look regal, like something the ancient Egyptians would worship, but I suspect in a past life, he was something closer to Homer Simpson.