Mixed Feelings

My little guy swiped the tears off of his face with the back of his arm and grinned as an excited squeal squeaked out. He had just suffered through painful Botox injections in his legs, but was quickly distracted by the huge bin of toys and games that was plopped in front of him to choose from.

I couldn’t help but crack a smile as well, and thought, there it is, reminding me again; grief and joy coexist.

I have felt bound by a very long season of grieving; one fresh struggle after another for a seemingly endless stretch of time. As I told a good friend the other day; it’s just a constant game of Russian roulette and we keep getting the bullet. I’m sure that’s not the case even though it feels that way sometimes. I have also seen that life does not pause to wait for the hard thing to be over; it scatters the joy right in with it. And thank goodness… am I right? I shudder to think what these dark days would feel like without the fresh breaths of laughter and excitement. Admittedly, I also struggle to fully appreciate the joys sometimes when I am grieving hard.

These past few weeks have been a more prominent example than most of this roller coaster of sorts. I sat across the table to sign for the closing of our beautiful new house crouched over from the fresh surgical scars of a few days prior, celebrated the excitement of boxes and furniture coming in the door while resenting the limitations that kept me from helping to carry and unpack. My flowers bloomed beautifully while my vegetable garden was laid to waste by the weather. Summer break and the delight in bikes and popsicles and lightening bugs and new friends, was coupled with a traumatic fall from a tree that landed my oldest girl unconscious and in an ambulance. On the same hand, the devastation and helplessness I felt over her injuries was bathed in the gratitude that it was not as disastrous as it easily could have been. I received insurance approval for a wonderful new device to help me walk more normally on the tails of hearing hard news from a close friend, and had a weekend of celebrating my newly sixteen year old boy and Father’s Day, coupled with anxiety and new testing for another unknown of my own. There is no time to stop and celebrate the victories or grieve the losses, there is simply a perpetual circulation of the highest highs and the lowest lows, and the best I have found is to drink deeply of the holy graces and allow yourself to feel the depths of the sorrows, and keep moving forward with them.

I know I’m not alone in this. I realize each of you dear readers face your own highs and lows with the revolutions around the sun, and I hope it gives us so much more kindness and understanding for each other. I haven’t mastered this, no; it’s easy to let the sting of the hard bleed into the moments that should be celebrated, but I’m trying ever so hard to fully embrace both, are you?

Please leave me a comment, it lets me know you’re listening!