And everyone’s singing like everything’s fine.

I had this really strange experience today, and I wanted to share. 

I left for a while to clear my head and get in some cardio on this gorgeous day in the South.  I went to the park, plugged in my iPod and hit shuffle.  I did my time, was a little more together, and headed for  home.  

I turned onto a suburban street very close to mine, just a couple of blocks from my house.  Beautiful, warm day.  Brilliant blue sky and bright sun.  My windows were down, and I was listening to the Gracious Few.  (For those of you who would care to know, "All I Hear" had just come on as I turned the corner.)

A house on the left side of the street, just a few houses down the two-tenths-of-a-mile-long street, had lots of cars parked outside.  Hanging from the eaves of the small front porch was a blue and white banner, proclaiming that someone was having a boy.  "Baby shower," I thought.  "How sweet!"

Four or five more houses down the street, same side, there was a house with multi-colored balloons on the mailbox.  I could see decorations at the back of the house.  It looked like someone was having a birthday party.

Almost to the end of that street lives a family whose youngest daughter likes to play with my youngest son.  They're a funny little duo when they're together, and they haven't had a play date in a while.  Her father, unfortunately, is battling yet another recurrence of pancreatic cancer.  He's in his mid-40's.  It's a crazy roughness in that house right now, that I can't really imagine.

Three houses down from their house, sits the next to the last house on the street.  It's at the end of the cul-de-sac.  There were several cars parked outside it, as well.  At that house, there have been lots of visitors all week.  In fact, on Wednesday, I noticed a bunch of cars parked in the street near that house.  The next day, I was behind a hearse driving through our suburban neighborhood, straight to that family's driveway.  There's been a constant stream of traffic, relatively speaking, on the end of that street for the last few days.  Today was no exception.

As I drove the last block-and-a-half toward home, I was struck by how there was a strange lifecycle being represented by those four homes, on their porches and mailboxes and at their curbs.  These things all happen every single day, good or bad, but I was blown away by how they were all happening at the same time in such open proximity to each other.

I don't have to delve into the Cycle of Lifeness of it all.  My readers are smart enough to read between those thick black lines.  It was the snapshot of that moment that took my breath away.  Each of these families, in incredibly close nearness, were each a different facet of the same, shining gem.  It was stunning and heartbreaking and beautiful, and it was a glimpse at life that was gone as soon as I turned the corner to go in my own direction. 

So I went home and got the family, and we celebrated my oldest son's birthday.  We were surrounded by hundreds of others this afternoon, who may or may not have been marking their own milestones.  I'll never know.  But the anonymity of their moments, or mine, doesn't make them any less poignant.  We're all shining facets sometime.