Smile Like Tigger

He was about to leave for over a week. We had recently moved with our four small children into a one room cabin as an interim to building on land. There was mud so thick we lost our shoes in it, had to pull our children out of it. When we walked to the car we wore muck boots and only then switched to city shoes. Our clothes were stained with mud. Our rugs got ruined with mud. We also had no WiFi and no cell service to even call my husband.

I walked out onto the porch as the neighbor’s chickens swarmed over the mud and, tears welling in my eyes, poured out my heart to God. How can I do this?!

The voice said, “Go to daily mass. Smile.”

And that became my mantra. Coming into the Presence, I was immediately aware of Him. The verse, “The joy of the Lord is your strength” and “I will enter His presence with great joy and His temple with praise” rang through my mind.

And to smile… how the simple action made a word of difference to my children and to my own psychology.

Daily mass became my anchor through my husband’s travels. The saints echoed its importance… the center, the pinnacle of existence. To receive God on our tongues and to sit at His feet, to stand with Mary at the foot of the Cross at His Sacrifice. One of the Saints said we should tremble when we see God in the hands of the priest.

My guardian angel would help me to go. Once I just could barely get the children out of bed and dressed and in the car, and I prayed for his help… suddenly it seems like a wind just blew everyone out the door, time slowed down, shoes were drawn like a magnet to the children, and we were in the car. He rides in front of the car like a winged creature.

One night I see him, like a tiger but with sparkling blue intelligent otherworldly eyes. He is next to me, he sees to the depths of me. Then at Mass I see him, as if in another dimension but there, walking with his slow cat-like step next to my children, keeping them in line as we head to the altar at Communion.

Afterwards the Joy overwhelms me, makes me giddy. The children want to play outside and we gather up leaves and jump into them, squeals and laughter ringing through the air, and I feel him with us. The Joy is so great it bubbles up and out of me, dizzying.

Thou preparest a table before me. My cup runneth over.

I wonder why my Angel, my Malchus, would appear as a tiger to me. And then one day, as I struggle to once again grasp on to joy, I see a coloring picture of Winnie the Pooh that the children have left behind. I remember Tigger. How I loved Tigger as a child, how his infectious joy made my child’s heart so very happy.

One must become like a little child to enter the kingdom of Heaven. As a famous author once said, It is the simple things in life that are the real ones after all.