Last month Sorrow posted on her blog about five gifts that she and her family made that she was giving away in a drawing where anyone could enter. The only rule was that you had to agree to pay it forward.

I entered, and was thrilled to win something – an absolutely beautiful stained glass piece that Sorrow created with her daughter. I had to wait a couple weeks until the sun came out for me to get some pictures, and even then I keep taking picture after picture, trying and trying to fully capture the piece.

I’ve finally decided that a picture can’t do it justice! I will post a couple pictures anyway.

I’ve always been attracted to light, and so I feel like I ended up with the absolute perfect gift for me. I have it in the window that is in my dining room/living room, which is where my computer currently is, and so I spend a lot of time looking at the stained glass. It evokes a lot of feelings in me – hope, safety, love, and something that is somehow a combination of the comfort we’d feel burrowed into our mother earth and the freedom we’d feel soaring through the skies.

stained glass from sorrow

And I know that some of the feelings that are evoked in me come from the fact that Sorrow and her family put this effort and excitement and hope and love into creating these gifts. I think of that, of them, when I see this beautiful stained glass, and I have a little hope for the world.

I haven’t paid it forward yet. I’ve been thinking of it for the past month, trying to figure out what I can do that would give someone else the same kind of hope and love and encouragement. I want to make it count, I want to motivate them to pass it forward the way I am motivated. And while I do have a tendency towards procrastination, I think that in this instance I am drawing it out, enjoying the anticipation as much as I enjoyed what Sorrow and her family did, and continue to enjoy the gift I was lucky enough to win.

stained glass from sorrow

I’ll post about what I come up with when I do pay it forward. I have some ideas (and yes, I’ll be doing more than one thing – the feeling is too big to contain it to just one!), I just have to do some planning and make some decisions. The excitement is contagious!