Unconditional

In the realm of the book world, my apartment complex manager mentioned to me about three weeks ago that our little community room library had too many books. In the meantime, I had been going to the Senior Center (Multipurpose Center) on Tuesdays for a class on Powerful Tools for Caregivers.

In my natural want-to-help way, I suggested she save small boxes to pack them in and ask someone to take them to various places... the Mission, the local library, the Salvation Army, etc. Then I decided I could fill a small box tote I had for transporting things on my mobility scooter to take with me to the Center Thrift Store along with other items I wanted to donate.

Two weeks ago, I brought the box tote to the community room to fill up. Have you ever had a book jump out at you and call your attention? I don't remember this happening to me since 2010. I spotted the title Unconditional, was intrigued by the cover and back cover description, and took it home to read. It is based on the motion picture with the same title. Remember, I rarely read fiction these days. I was in for a real tear-jerker. Perhaps it was a good time to do some crying. This last week's class for Caregivers was about emotions and what happens when you hold them in. One can erupt like a volcano.

As I read the book, cleansing tears washed over me. I found numerous synchronicities to situations I had dealt with in my own life... and the numerous times just when I believed the worst, an obvious divine presence showed up to intercede.

The story begins with a woman named Samantha, Sam for short. She is young, married to her first love, and living on a wonderful ranch that his parents gave to them. I must include here that the author writes what I can only describe as artistically and poetically. I was immediately captured by her writing.

My first burst of tears erupted with the compassion I felt toward her grief when her perfect life is shattered by the murder of her husband in a dark alley of a bad neighborhood where he went to repair lights that were out. No, I didn't have a husband who was murdered. But many relationships and marriages had died. Similar grief. It was about the obvious presence of the divine when three years later, as Sam was about to pull the trigger to end her own life in the same place her husband had been murdered, the final moment is interrupted by a child yelling because his little sister had been hit by a car.

In addition to tears of sadness and compassion, I kept bursting into tears about the divine interventions weaved into the story. I knew there was no coincidence that the children were out there during a time she was intending to end her life. I never actually followed through with ending my own life during two periods of despair. I was just obsessed with suicidal thoughts. Memories of these situations rose while I was reading about someone else's experience. (Read my post about Talking Myself Out of Suicide.) I didn't go as far as Sam did with putting a gun to her head.

In the story, Sam comes out of her daze and rushes the two children off to a hospital where the unconscious child could be treated... and hopefully saved. At the hospital, a man shows up regarding the children... a man she hadn't seen since grade school... a man who had been her very best friend. I was sad at that point about not having any childhood best friends. Then I kept reading.

Joe was the only one on the planet who could pull her out of her grief. What an incredible synchronicity that the same children who were in the alley were connected to this man. I recalled the time I had shouted to God: "If you want me to go" (to my son's wedding in California), "send someone to help me and give me a reason to come back!" followed by meeting a man who succeeded in pulling me out of my personal despair.

The story has one arc after another, expertly interweaved like a suspense novel with none of the characters knowing what the other had been going through until the end of it all. It's a murder mystery (Who murdered Sam's husband?), riveted with suspense (Will Sam commit suicide? Will Joe die?), a love story, and contains many beautiful miracles.

In one scene, Joe tells Sam how he ended up in prison for doing something on a dare. He gets into an altercation which results in 40 days of solitary confinement. Sam later reveals to him her self-imposed solitary confinement during the previous three years of despair. I paused while remembering when I lived in the trailer park in Bakersfield and the day I found out it was filled with ex-convicts and drug addicts. In my innocence, I befriended Blondie (not her real name)... a woman who told me about the people who lived in the park and the 20 years in prison she did which included solitary confinement. She had given me the book We're All Doing Time to read, and I had realized I had been in prison, too, just one without bars.

Sam's husband's parents had given them their ranch when they moved to a warmer area. In the midst of her grief, she couldn't appreciate all that she had. I remember during years of depression, I could not appreciate what I had, either, compared to life in third world countries and slums. Sam gets involved with all the underprivileged children Joe had taken under his wing who nearly always were happy despite their circumstances, and suddenly she realizes she had been discounting the positive (one of many cognitive distortions I discovered I had).

Sam had been writing a children's book ever since she and Joe were in grade school, including drawing the illustrations. After her husband was murdered, she abandoned the dream. All her drawings lived in a room she couldn't bear to enter. I wondered if I had abandoned any particular dreams. Yes, one of many topics I've contemplated on, is what I may have dreamed as a child I would do when I grow up. Interweaved in this amazing book are the bits, pieces, and synchronicities of how Sam's inspiration comes back, including the discovery of finding all the drawings that child she saved had been doing...  just as she had done when she was a child.

Sam forgets about her grief by becoming actively involved with caring for the children. When she realizes how blessed she is with having the ranch, she invites them all out there for a weekend... realizing she had just found a purpose in life. I reminisced about how Nancy with Reaching Beyond Words had walked into my life in January 2018 with the desire to get children's stories she wrote published. I had asked God what I was to do next after becoming wheelchair dependent and letting go of two stressful volunteer jobs. Months later, Nancy had texted me if I knew any bookkeepers which led to my volunteering as theirs. Both organizations are doing similar things. Perhaps my future includes underprivileged children?

Sam is absolutely sure the man who lives in the projects next to the two children she had rescued that day in the alley was the man who murdered her husband. This scene is one of many that reveals a surprising conclusion toward the end. I reminisced at the number of times I had been sure of certain things in my life which turned out to be false conclusions (another cognitive distortion I had).

The book I had read just before this one was Ask Your Guides by Sonia Choquette. I feel certain Unconditional was meant to find me. I've been logging every synchronicity I notice in a journal... and the number has been mounting.

Earlier in the week, I dreamed a woman I had met in Toastmasters (moved away) came to visit with two small children. (There were two small children in Unconditional, too.) Sonia wrote that many times, guides will urge you to call someone who needs support. She remained on my mind the entire day, so that night, I called her. She surprised me with the question, "Why did you call?" Odd question, I thought. I told her about the book I read, the dream I had, and my urge to call. In case one of her guides urged me, I decided to follow through. It turned out she had been thinking about me as well as a book project she was still struggling with. I thought about Sam in Unconditional.

One of the many things I think about is this blog. I never know what I will write about next or when I will write it. I tell myself not to worry about it. When it is time, the divine will whisper the topic to me, and my fingers will write it. This is one of them.