"Take My Hand, Precious Lord"

This is just a great song. So incredibly great to sing that. . . I don't want to sully my praise with reservations. It's that good. There's something about spirituals, a blues-y earthy reality that they have. I sang a lot of wonderful spiritual arrangements in college choir, they've stick in my head, and I feel embarassed to still be so moved. But I am moved. I sang this today in my voice lesson, with more feeling than Beth has yet seen. I had been exhausted coming into the lesson today, and this didn't energize me, but the breaths I took seemed to reach very deeply, very fully into the center of me, and from that center came my voice and strength, my belief: 'I am tired, I am weak, I am worn. . . Hear my cry, hear my call. Hold my hand, lest I fall. . .'

I miss vacations alone. I miss those I used to take with my husband, without my daughter. We're going away this weekend, just for the day, and all I can think is that my daughter will go ballistic, singly or multiply, and I will have to deal with her. I will get no break. This doesn't entirely make sense: my husband will be there, and my family. I know that they'll pitch in if I appear to be going insane. I still miss being alone. I miss it so much that I just want to cry. I feel like the summer will never end. The endless heat doesn't help.