The place between the two

Worked on my tower today. Such a dynamic day: rain, sun, purple clouds, hail, strip the coat off, coat back on, snow, blue sky. A day of opposites all stiched together.
I was thinking more about that while I was standing next to my metal saw. I had 36 brackets to make out of 1" x 1" x 1/4" thick angle iron. This meant making 36 cuts at the power metal saw, a big contraption on wheels with lubricant pump[ that feeds the cut with water/oil mix. Anyways, standing there watching the cuts, I got to thinking about the auction where I got this band saw. After I bought it, I found out that the auction was due to the guy's death which was a suicide.
And here I was using the tool he most likely spent quite a bit of time staring at while operating it--just like I was now. What were his thoughts? Despair, anger, loneliness...most likely all those that then turned to just an empty dullness, since suicide is just the final move for a life already mostly dead.
My thoughts, and my project is so different than that man's reality. Building a giant fort for my kids to play in. Giviing life, finally, to a crazy dream that I've had since my own childhood. Standing and coaxing the blade in the cut and humming songs and feelings so blessed that I had this whole day to play, to create.

Those two very different states of mind--his and mine--can turn on a dime, can change in a moment. A dog is gone, a dog comes home. A car's on the road, a car's in the ditch, a person loved is suddenly a person being buried. It's so damned hard to understand how this package must come this way, this gift of life. Like take-out food brought home with things inside you don't want, this bittersweet mix of all of it--best and worst. In what happens to us, iin what we are capable of, in what we witness in others and happening to others. I don't have anything more to say about that. I do know this, though: for me, God and the way of following God I choose (I'll call that religion) are at this intersection of the sweet and bitter. Showing me, helping me, holding me.