It was the end of a long and challenging week. My husband, away for the week in Colorado on a business trip, was sick.
After six days of “flying solo” with all the usual responsibilities inside and outside our bustling household — plus, worried about my sick husband whom I couldn’t care for due to distance — I finally gave in to hopeless exhaustion.
I didn’t even say “good night” to my children before falling sound asleep on the couch in my clothes and with the lights on.
Four hours later, I awoke. The house was silent, the children were all in bed, and someone had placed a tiny stuffed dog on my chest.
Envisioning the small hands that had placed him there while I slept, I smiled and knew that I was loved.
Proof of love
The tiny dog was proof that someone cared enough to leave a quiet token of love in the midst of my hopelessness, exhaustion, worry, and inability to maintain God’s peace in my heart in the face of challenges.
It was a simple gesture of love from my son, who didn’t realize how much it meant to me until he saw the dog in my purse the next morning.
“Thank you for the tiny dog,” I said. “It really made me smile in the middle of the night.”
He grinned. Hope returned. And the tiny dog still rides in my purse to this day — a symbol of how small, loving gestures can help heal chaotic hearts.
Sometimes, amid the chaos in our lives, we just need to know that someone cares.
Our Father’s love
How often does Our Father in Heaven surround us with these tiny tokens of love every day of our lives? How often do we ignore them, dismiss them, or not even notice them?
Even if we think no one else on this earth cares about our difficulties, Our Father in heaven does.
He loves us so much that He sent His only Son to die for us so that we might join Him in Heaven one day. This is proof of His love, not to mention how He continues to be with us every day through the Eucharist and the Sacraments and the Church.
This is a love that sustains us through whatever injustice, uncertainty, and challenge we must face during our time here on Earth.
Tiny reminders
No matter the place and time in which Our Father has positioned us, He calls us to take time each day to bask in the tiny reminders of His love with which He surrounds us.
The reminders are everywhere, in the small corners of our world and in our hearts, if we take the time to pray and pay attention to what He directs us to notice.
Learn to recognize His tokens of love and to rest in His peace, even amid dark times of earthly chaos and exhaustion.
Julianne Nornberg, mother of four children, is a teacher’s aide at St. John the Baptist School in Waunakee.