If I Could Wish for a Super Power...

it would be the innate ability to know exactly what to say to every person and how precisely to say it.

That's it.

But, then again, that's everything.

Once I thought I wanted it to be "the fly on the wall" power: that opportunity to sit in, unseen and unheard, on any communication I'd otherwise lack the chance to partake. But now that I know how people - myself included - can let the hounds of hell loose through the portals of our mouths, I've decided that might not work out so great after all.

My mind has changed on this topic, probably without me fully knowing it, this year. It's been a brutal one for our community corporately, though one of my family's better, privately. The loss outside the four walls of our home has been staggering - and truncated harshly by death, time and again. And, though I mourn the loss of my father, I have such peace, comfort has now rolled over grief and come out the winner. Still, I look around and find hardship seemingly everywhere, from which I am neither fully disentangled nor entirely immune. This is how my new want for super power was born, I am sure.

Sometimes, I wish I had words like those in the movies: a precise and rhythmic score of the perfect rhetoric meshed with a most excellent delivery to equally comfort, inspire, and delight - where, pray tell, is the recipe for that?! Yes, if I could just get a great Austen or Bronte, Shyamalan or Sorkin, then I'd have delicacy and art (and let's not forget) wit, presented with a bow of love and care to wrap the gift.

But, alas, I've no such super power, and I'm left wondering if my awkward ums, uhs, and ahs have left a geyser of pain uncapped for the here and now. In the end, I'm learning that, if I could wish for a super power, I'd primarily choose this one.

But, since I can't have that one, I look for one I can have - and you can have it, too. While a well-turned phrase of love and appreciation can surely signify value and import, never let it be said that it takes no great restraint to refrain from talking at all.

For silence, when seasoned with your rapt attention and comforting arms, rescues us all in times of trouble.

I'm learning it is, undeniably, a super power in itself.