Incandescent....

I know this woman from our Celtic Celebrations...I'll call her Mary. I cannot remember the first day I laid eyes on this woman, but I can remember clearly thinking, this woman has a shining soul. I could see her light up the room by her very presence. And every time I've seen her since, I simply am drawn to be near her...to talk with her...to hear her talk.

She is also physically beautiful...but that is beside the point and that isn't what I see when I see her. Everything I see in her is internal...Except the exhaustion.

For this shiny soul is going through a hard patch. Her husband is very ill. She is coping and taking care as best she can, and you can see it's taking it's toll. Her eyes are always red rimmed and you can sense the exhaustion, but it's not enough to dim the light of her being.

I saw her again on Easter. She told us of her husband's health, he's been in the hospital 5 times since November, and of their hope he will get to come home today...and then she asked me how work is going.

And this is part of her shining...no matter how much her life is dragging her down or how tired she is, she always finds time to ask how someone else is...and to share a word with them.

The very first night we talked to each other, I told her funny stories about dentures (her husband was getting them) and she volunteered to be a reference on a job I was trying for with the county (she works for the county)...and that's sort of how she is with people.

And then, last night, after talking about her husband and how ill he has been and how worried she has been about him, and then listening to my description of work, she took me to another room to pray for me. TO PRAY FOR ME. To lay hands on me and to share that shiny soul of hers with me and I thought, I should be praying for YOU, not the other way around...but anyway, off we went and she prayed for me for my work and said she sees it as being sort of a ministry for me, which gave me a better focus for work, and I told her she needed to take care of herself before she breaks, at which point we hugged and she cried.

I was utterly overwhelmed by the honor of hugging this shiny being...and I just had to share her shininess with you...