Team work.  It makes the Dream Work! Oh how I see this truth more and more.  As alone as I am, I can’t do it alone.  I can’t, so I don’t.  So then what do these Oreo cookie shells have to do with team work?  Everything, I’ll explain. 

You see, Jaymen loves the cream inside. He doesn’t hate the cookie shell. He’ll eat it, but he doesn’t love it. I love the outer chocolate cookie only.  I don’t like the cream at all but what he loves is the cream.  He knows of my love for the cookie shell without cream so he eats the cream and I eat the chocolate cookie shell.  

We make a great team, him and me in this cookie eating endeavor!  As much as I enjoy the chocolate cookie, what I see and love even more is how beautiful it is when I come home from work and see a stack of chocolate cookie shells on my nightstand.  

My heart flutters and my tummy twirls and my body is filled up with love as it reaches my face and I smile.  My little boy is loving me.  He knows what makes me happy.  He’s thinking of me.  

He sacrifices eating the shell, not because he doesn’t want to eat it, but even more so because he wants to give it to me.  I see that stack of cookie shells with little teeth marks running through the remnants of frosting.

Then there are the ones his little brother leaves for me.  Those ones are a little slobbery, which makes it soggy.  Little brother isn’t as skilled at removing the frosting as big brother.  What is beautiful about this though, is the baby is learning from his big brother, how to love, and how to give. 

Soggy isn’t my favorite, I prefer it crunchy, but; even soggy with slobber, I can feel the love and commitment, and the teaching that’s being given through these little cookies. When I feel this way from this cookie stack carefully and lovingly left for me on my nightstand,  I feel like I can do this. 

I feel like I can do all of it. It’s the healing balm of pure love in a soggy tooth marked chocolate cookie left on my dresser that fills me for the day and allows me to keep on keeping on.  I say to him, Jaymen, we make such a great team! 

He looks at me and says “yup!  Team work makes the dream work!”  It sure does, I think.  I know that this team I have here on earth with me; the them and all the somebody’s out there that do help when, where and how they can. 

It’s my team and we’re making it work, even when the dream took a turn I couldn’t have fathomed. I know that the beauty of little chocolate cookie shells teaches me more about pure love, teamwork and creating a place where it does work. 

Even when it doesn’t look like it was originally intended, nor function as before. It still is perfectly suited to the needs at hand. Even when how the cookie once looked, or how my life once looked beautifully put together; I see now how when things get pulled apart, sometimes, it can be better for everyone.