Dignified

How long can a person keep asking for her basic needs before she loses her dignity?

Imagine a woman. She can look like anyone, live anywhere. Those things don't matter. What matters is that she wakes up every morning to pray in the dark, at a time most would still call night. After she exercises and showers, she prepares breakfast. She wakes her children to eat and irons their clothes for school.

She pushes the iron around holes in the jeans, over stains that have set, and through spots that are missing buttons. New clothes are needed, have been needed for months now. But to get new clothes she'd need to ask her husband for money and that isn't a conversation that she is prepared for. So she prays that he sees the need and supplies on his own, though she knows it won't happen. She lays the clothes and the children's toothbrushes. They dress in shirts that ride up and pants that end high above their scudded shoes.

Restless Spirit Syndrome

I'm so not in the "Christmas spirit" or whatever that is. I can't concentrate. I feel restless. I have Restless Spirit Syndrome [RSS].

What I want to do and be is at cross purposes with what the world is trying to force me to do and be. It is a dark era, full of discontent.