Sometimes things are hard.
Sometimes hard things don’t care that it’s supposed to be the most wonderful time of the year.
Sometimes the holidays are trying and filled with uncertainty and fear and grief and regret and doubt.
Sometimes the pockets of joy are few and far between.
Sometimes the holiday magic eludes your best efforts of grasping it.
Sometimes the light at the end of the tunnel feels like the North Star; they say it’s there but has anyone actually ever seen it?
For me personally, this holiday season has been some of those times.
But, sometimes something happens in a hard season that reminds us that it is not always going to be so hard and I had one of those moments recently and I wanted to share it with you.
Especially you who may also be in a ‘sometimes it’s hard’ season.
My life is currently a series of mishaps compounded by Murphy’s law of “if it can go wrong it will.”
Yesterday was one such time.
My kids bus decided to come 10 minutes early without warning and because we struggle to be on time, an early bus arrival means they flat out missed the bus. And because our mishaps tend to snowball into meltdowns, a missed bus for some of my kids means a missed bus for all my kids.
My morning was made Murphy-er by the fact that I got to drive five kids to four different locations in five different directions and don’t ask me about the math of it all. Anyway, that is all well and good except…taco dip.
I had offered to bring taco dip to a work lunch and I had planned to make it in the morning after my kids were tucked nicely into their bus seats because we have already established the “struggle to be timely” thing.
So already running too many minutes behind I settled on the next best thing of store bought taco dip.
Did I have time to go to a store when I was already late for a very important date?
No.
But I had planned to eat my trouble’s worth of weight in tortilla chips so I stopped by a local grocery store that has always had pre-packaged taco dip.
“Always” as in since I went to my grandma’s house for Christmas in 1999.
I knew I could be in and out of the store in less than seven minutes because I know exactly where they keep the centuries old taco dip.
I went straight to the deli counter where it has always been and scoured all the shelves in all the deli areas to find that they had no taco dip.
Flabbergasted and flushed I flagged down a deli employee and asked where they keep the taco dip. They replied with a half crooked, apologetic smile: “oh we used to carry that but we don’t anymore.”
Thanks, Murph.
Frustrated but not surprised I threw my head back and with an audible exhale whispered, “of course.”
But, since I got this far and was this late I decided to just grab something- anything- and that anything was a container of pre-packaged sliders when what to my wandering eyes did appear? Why two packages of taco dip!
The kind we had at my grandma’s in 1999.
Tucked in right above the boxes of sliders and in between I don’t even know what was on the sides of it because all I could say was “no.way.”
Can we pause for dramatic effect?
I feel like we should pause for dramatic effect.
You can bet your bottom dollar that I grabbed both containers of the miracle dip and stopped long enough to give thanks to whatever guardian angel knew I needed a salsa break.
On my drive into work, I kept peeking over at the bag with the magic taco dip and I spent the drive reflecting on the simple reminder from what I can only attribute to divine intervention.
Sometimes it gets dark. But, if we look again, maybe we’ll find just enough light for a sigh of relief that offers a glimmer of hope.
Even if it’s not a traditionally merry or happy holiday season, may you find yourself some sighs of relief and glimmers of hope while in these trenches.
✌🏽,❤️, and 🌮 dip.
rebelhousewifeblog.com 