The other day, I was stung by a bee while doing dishes ... inside. Honestly, after my first yelp of surprise, my predominant feeling was empathy. The poor bee had accidentally flown into our home looking for pollen-heavy blossoms. Instead, he met my daughter who was immediately focused on his destruction. However, her intention was more vehement than her fly-swatting skills, and he ended up half dead in the kitchen trash. What had happened? His world was suddenly tossed upside down, and he was bludgeoned by unknown forces. The poor bee dragged his mangled dignity out of the sticky eggshells and crumpled marker drawings and stung the first tangible threat he sensed – me.
Shortly before they moved to Charlotte, I was blessed to live the cloistered life with the Poor Clares of Perpetual Adoration in Portsmouth, Ohio, for nine months. Little did I know upon discerning that I had no cloistered vocation that a decade later, I’d have a chance to put to use some of the life skills I learned there.