What life lesson have you recently been reminded of or been awakened to for the first time?

Life delivers little lessons to us all the time, sometimes repeatedly, until we get them.

And then there are the ones that come at us brand new, smack us like a 2×4, because of some new experience or some new way of looking at experience.

What’s yours?

Here’s mine for the week:

Never forget how much your sense of competence and feeling of command of your life depends on your mobility.

I’m not one to take mobility for granted. I remember every day to be grateful for the ability to walk and move under my own power. But until this week I had forgotten how heavily my feeling of independence and self-determination are tied to that—and how helpless, dependent, and needing of compassion are those who have lost it for good.

I have to put up with a major impediment for only eight weeks, but three days are enough to be highly educational.

Let me remember to be generous with assistance to those who have mobility problems, without taking away what they can do for themselves or underscoring their limitations. And let me also remember not to be crabby while I’m stuck needing help. Amen.