Inter-Woven

I was reading some old emails that I had saved, checking to see if I still wanted to keep them after all these years have passed.  It's nice to laugh at the funny ones and think about the serious ones.

One of them ended with this line:

EACH OF US IS A VITAL THREAD IN ANOTHER PERSON'S TAPESTRY.  OUR LIVES ARE WOVEN TOGETHER FOR A REASON.

Well that's the truth.  The tapestry of my life is made up of all that I have encountered and lived.  Whether the thread made a positive contribution to the picture, or perhaps was more of a blemish, it still is altogether that which makes me who I am.  Some encounters were of the finest silken threads in the most lustrous of colors.  Other encounters used rough, dull, sub-standard thread. And some may have used an invisible thread which, while not seen by others, has given strength and support to the whole piece.

Just seeing my name in a sentence always gives me a little thrill, but this one was so evocative of who I am, I had to share. :)

And because it's worth reading, here is the email story that the above thought was part of:

A mouse looked through the crack in the wall to see the farmer and his wife open a package.  "What food might this contain?"  The mouse wondered.  He was devastated to discover it was a mousetrap.

Retreating to the farmyard, the mouse proclaimed this warning :  "There is a mousetrap in the house!   There is a mousetrap in the house!"

The chicken clucked and scratched, raised her head and said, "Mr. Mouse, I can tell this is a grave concern to you, but it is of no consequence to me.  I cannot be bothered by it." 

The mouse turned to the pig and told him, "There is a mousetrap in the house!  There is a mousetrap in the house!"

The pig sympathized, but said, "I am so very sorry, Mr. Mouse, but there is nothing I can do about it but pray.  Be assured you are in my prayers."

The mouse turned to the cow and said, "There is a mousetrap in the house!  There is a mousetrap in the house!"

The cow said, "Wow, Mr. Mouse. I'm sorry for you, but it's no skin off my nose."

So, the mouse returned to the house, head down and dejected, to face the farmer's mousetrap

. . .. Alone……

That very night a sound was heard throughout the house -- the sound of a mousetrap catching its prey.

The farmer's wife rushed to see what was caught. In the darkness, she did not see it.  It was a venomous snake whose tail was caught in the trap.

The snake bit the farmer's wife.  The farmer rushed her to the hospital.

When she returned home she still had a fever.  Everyone knows you treat a fever with fresh chicken soup.  So the farmer took his hatchet to the farmyard for the soup's main ingredient:

But his wife's sickness continued.  Friends and neighbors came to sit with her around the clock.

To feed them, the farmer butchered the pig.  But, alas, the farmer's wife did not get well...

She died.

So many people came for her funeral that the farmer had the cow slaughtered to provide enough meat for all of them for the funeral luncheon.

And the mouse looked upon it all from his crack in the wall with great sadness.

The next time you hear someone is facing a problem and you think it doesn't concern you, remember ---

When one of us is threatened, we are all at risk.  We are all involved in this journey called life.

We must keep an eye out for one another and make an extra effort to encourage one another.
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