Helping Hands

Getting away for the weekend gave me a lot of time to relax.  To hang out with nature.  And time to think.  I woke up this morning feeling more like my old self and realized I had dreamed about hands last night.  

Helping hands...you know...the kind that always seem to be around when you need them. Loving hands that welcome us into this world and teach us our first steps.  Hands to hold and cradle and rock us to sleep.  Hands to watch in wonder as we become a mirror image of those hands.

Helping hands to comfort and soothe our worries away on our first day of kindergarten.  Hands to help guide us on the right path to adulthood.  And when we make mistakes, those hands are there to lift us up...to help dust us off...and to push us to keep moving forward until we've reached our goals. Strong hands to mold and measure all those moments which make up a childhood.

Then one day those hands wipe away the tears as they lovingly push us out of the nest and into a nest of our own.  Helping hands to give us away to the ones who have come to love us.  Hands who eagerly await the chance to reach out to our own next little hands and help welcome them into the world.

And somewhere along the way, the tides turn and the hands change hands.  Now our hands are the ones reaching out to help.  Our hands extend support and comfort as we try to repay all those years of memories of those loving hands.  Hands that show the wrinkles of time have touched them but they still have the power to lift us up and guide us when we falter.

And when the time comes...when those hands lay in eternal rest...our hands will wipe away the tears as we close our hands to pray.  Prayers to bless those hands that lived and laughed and loved through the ages.  And when all the tears are wiped away, we will take the hands of those we welcomed into the world and tell them of the day we met our own helping hands...