As I sit on the couch at 7:00 on a Saturday morning, making a grocery list of what we need, I am tempted to insert such things as patience, a cure for my husband’s illness, a job further east, a dog who will allow my husband to sleep in on a Saturday morning.

The food and sundry items seem so ordinary and mundane yet we need them to sustain us.

Wouldn’t it be great if we could list our other needs on a piece of paper and travel to a store and pick them off a shelf and pay for them and leave? Would we be able to manuver the cart out the door? Would they fit in the back of my Volvo? Some days they barely fit in my mind.

They haunt my dreams, my waking hours. Monopolizing my conversations. I am consumed by them, yet this is who I am. So I will continue my grocery list and fight the urge to take the easy way out.