Amazing Grace

I have a bucket list.  You know the kind:  the list of all the things you want to do before you leave this world?  For me, the items on there are definitely stretch objectives.  I'm proud to count myself as a person that does not put off obtainable joys, yet some joys I wish to experience are simply out of my current capacity either due to financial or logistical reasons.

So, Andrea Bocelli and his ridiculous ticket prices were sitting on said bucket list waiting.

I knew the moment he announced his 2011 concerto.  His U.S. "tour" was coming to Anaheim.  Close enough!  Immediately I looked up the tickets, and just as immediately I knew I was going to have to watch Craig's list and pray that someone would have to give up their tickets at a loss.  I visited every day just about, but no one was selling those tickets for less than face value.  So I kept waiting.

Then came the Great Flood of 2011.  The one in my kitchen.  The one that took out my dishwasher and my floor.  And though insurance covered the majority of the cost, I still took a hit that made my precious dream of Andrea in person an impossibility this time around.

Yet on Thanksgiving night, during dinner.. and I believe we were chatting about something on my bucket list... Cheyanne suddenly got up from the table and came back with an envelope. I opened the card.
"Merry (Early) Christmas!" It read.  "Because of all the people wandering this universe, you deserve for all your dreams to come true.  Chewy, Mom! and Tim"

I had no idea what to expect when I pulled the folded paper out of the envelope.  Unfolding it and seeing the words "Andrea Bocelli" threw me for such a loop I'm quite sure the neighbors heard me shrieking in delight.  Screaming actually.  I could not believe it.  A dream, quite literally, come true.

There was another letter inside with the tickets. This one just from Chey and I'm not going to share it here, but suffice it to say that that letter alone was every bit as wonderful as those tickets.  To be loved like that is a greater gift than anything in the world and I am so very, very grateful.

So it was that I sat next to my dear friend, Sabra, on December 11th listening to that amazing voice.  It was surreal.  I wiped away a few tears in both disbelief of my great fortune and because Sr. Bocelli just does that to me.  and then he sang "Amazing Grace."

This is a song I don't love.  In fact, it's rather boring though the words are nice.  But when Andrea sings it, it just rips your heart out.  It's like you've never heard it before.  And the irony that a blind man is singing "I was blind, but now I see" is not lost.  Yet it wasn't the beauty, nor the way he connects with what seems like God himself that hit me.  I sat realizing that I was once a wretch.  Yes, I was wretched.  I was sometimes cruel, I took advantage, I lied and I was reprehensible.  I could have kept going down that path but for my children.  Somehow I always managed to put them first, to keep the focus on their welfare and eventually I became the person I wanted them to think I was.  It was nothing short of amazing grace that saved a wretch like me.

With very little make-up still on my face I left that show changed - again.  I realized I have never been alone even when I felt completely and utterly abandoned.  There has been a hand guiding me the entire time.  He often says "Be Still."  I hear it all the time - at least when I finally shut up long enough to hear.  On December 11th, he finished that sentence:  "Be Still and Know That I Am."  Indeed.  He is in the face of my children.