Every spring and every fall we dutifully make the rounds to our clocks and digital devices, putting them first forward an hour and then back in an attempt to make the days “longer”.
As if time was in our hands.
The sun rises and sets according to the Creator’s schedule, we can neither speed the world’s turning, nor slow it down.
We can only choose whether to be present in the moments He grants us.
Read the rest here: Time Change
It’s been just over seven years since Dominic left us suddenly, unexpectedly, and without warning.
Thankfully my heart has healed enough that every day is no longer filled with tears.
But there are still hard days, still challenging seasons.
And when they feel like they might last forever, I remind myself that even the worst day of my life was just twenty-four hours.
Night fell, the earth turned, and another sunrise showed up on cue.
❤
I don’t know just when I figured it out, but somewhere in this Valley it dawned on me-NO day lasts forever.
Many feel like they do.
The day I got the news stretched impossibly long in front of me as calls were made and people came to be wtih us.
But even THAT day ended. Night fell, the earth turned, and another sunrise showed up on cue.
Read the rest here: Twenty-four Hours
Before Dominic ran ahead to Heaven I didn’t cry much.
Since April 12, 2014 I’ve cried a river-tears for breakfast, lunch, dinner and into my pillow at night when I tried to fall asleep.
When sorrow overtakes a heart, it’s hard to think about anything else.
There was a very real danger that sadness would drag me down in a pit so deep I would never be able to crawl back out.
And then the enemy of my soul would win.
But God.
The most beautiful words I know.
God reached down and raised me up from the depths of despair. He dragged me out of the pit of sorrow. His light shone so bright that even the darkness of death could not hide it.
Like the Psalmist, I can praise the Lord for saving me from my enemy.
I praise you, Lord, because you have saved me
Psalm 30: 1-5 GNT
and kept my enemies from gloating over me.
2 I cried to you for help, O Lord my God,
and you healed me;
3 you kept me from the grave.
I was on my way to the depths below,[b]
but you restored my life.
4 Sing praise to the Lord,
all his faithful people!
Remember what the Holy One has done,
and give him thanks!
5 His anger lasts only a moment,
his goodness for a lifetime.
Tears may flow in the night,
but joy comes in the morning.
It’s thought that David wrote this psalm on the dedication of his house. He had been pursued, fought battles and only now taken the throne promised to him years before. He had literally been saved from death on many occasions. His enemies had plotted and planned and never been successful.
If God is for us, who can stand against us?
I think David was also thankful that God had rescued him from the pit of despair. I can’t read the psalms without a sense of David’s internal battle against what may have been depression but was most certainly deep, deep sorrow and disappointment that life didn’t go as planned.
When David thanked God for reaching down, lifting him up and setting his feet on solid ground he was as thankful for the emotional rescue as for the physical one. He had learned that things might be bad for awhile but they would not be bad forever.
Despite how long the darkness lasts or how awful the blow, it’s only a tiny blip compared to eternity.
It feels interminable. It seems insurmountable. But it isn’t. God’s goodness overcomes any scheme of the enemy and I need to remind my heart of that truth.
One of the reasons I watch the sun rise every morning is because it affirms this truth: night does not last forever. No matter how dark, no matter how cold, no matter how frightful, no matter how sad-night is constrained by the sunrise.
My earthly suffering is constrained by God’s goodness.
Tears are still my food more often than I could have ever imagined they would be.
Dominic is not going to be miraculously raised from his grave (although God could do it if He chose).
But my tears won’t last forever.
Morning is coming.
Sure as sunrise.
QUESTIONS:
PRAYER:
Lord,
So often I am dragged down into the pit of despair by my sadness, sorrow and hopelessness. When I wake to tears on my pillow and fall asleep to my own sobs, it seems like there will never be a moment or a day when my heart is not overwhelmed.
I feel like the enemy is winning some days.
Help my heart hold onto the truth that I am only privy to a tiny sliver of knowledge. Give me strength to hold onto hope when my own strength fails. Put praise in my mouth when You pull me out of the pit, foil the schemes of my enemy and set me on the solid ground of truth. Speak courage to my soul.
Let each sunrise remind me again that the night will not last forever. Darkness cannot swallow the light. Death does not win. Life and light and love endure forever.
Amen
I don’t know about you, but sometimes cute little memes intended to help me “look on the bright side” fly all over me.
Sure, if life gives you lemons (bad hair day, late to work, long line at the grocery store) make lemonade.
But sometimes it’s not lemons life gives you, it’s an avalanche of pain, heartache and world-shattering awful.
You can’t make lemonade from THAT.
So often life is absolutely NOT the party I had hoped for. And all the catchy psychobabble parading across my social media newsfeed doesn’t make it any easier to take.
This sweet little picture did though.
There are days when I just can’t. And that’s OK.
But when I stop to listen, even on the hardest days, there’s still sweet music in the distance. ❤️
This past weekend was an emotional one.
My deployed son began his trek back home to his wife and newborn son.
My youngest son went on the bachelor trip with his soon to be brother-in-law and was incommunicado for almost 72 hours which always makes me nervous.
My daughter’s wedding is only a few weeks away and there is so much to do. Fun things. Things I want to do.
My companion animal and faithful sidekick died two weeks ago and I haven’t been sleeping nearly as well as I did before
It was the fifth anniversary of Dominic’s death and funeral.
I didn’t cry, but then I did.
And I couldn’t stop.
I just couldn’t stop.
How in the world can it be five years? I can’t explain it to anyone who hasn’t buried a child. But I keep trying. The giant chasm between what I thought life would be like and what it actually turned out to be is so wide that it’s impossible to comprehend. I’m living it and I can’t comprehend it.
I am trying so, so hard to participate.
I’m working at keeping grief at bay and leaning into the life I have without constantly comparing it to the life I thought I would have or the life I wanted instead. I’m purposing to keep my expectations low so I won’t be disappointed.
But it’s not working.
I think I’m just at the end of my personal resources. I think I’ve exhausted any reserve I might have had. I’m leaning into Truth and holding onto the hem of His garment.
I know it won’t always be this way.
The tears will dry up. They always do.
Tomorrow is a new day.
Today I decided for one day to ignore the clock and my own internal tick, tick, tick tracking minutes and hours.
Today I did or didn’t do whatever I wanted.
I refused to check my list.
Instead of optimum efficiency, batching chores and trips upstairs or down, I meandered in and out of rooms. I picked up one thing and passed another. I didn’t “clean as you go” when I made my salad. I started something and didn’t finish. I stared. I hummed. I listened to wind chimes tinkle away the hours.
My big fat cat jumped in my lap and I let him stay there even though it means I can’t do anything else because my arms don’t quite reach around him.
People tell me all the time, “Don’t worry! It’ll be there tomorrow!” But that is precisely what usually worries me-it WILL be there tomorrow.
Today, though, I gulped those words, chewed them and swallowed. Gone.
And you know what?
It was fine.
Fine.
Just fine.
I doubt this will be a trend. Fifty-five years of task-oriented, time-conscious living can’t be swept away by one glorious day of living minute to minute.
But it’s a start.
I don’t know about you, but I think of every day as a blank canvas and it’s my responsibility to paint something useful or beautiful or helpful on it.
I’m a list maker so each night before I drift off, I usually jot down 3 or 300 things I would like to do the next day.
I get up, get started and then (more often than I’d like to confess!) hit a wall.
Sometimes it’s the wall of circumstance. Things happen I didn’t expect and suddenly the hours I was going to spend cleaning the garage are spent cleaning a mess.
Sometimes it’s the wall of community. Someone calls. Or a multitude of someones call. I hate to admit it but I’m really not a fan of the telephone. Like Alexander Graham Bell, I consider it more of an inconvenience and interruption than a means of delightful connectivity. Minutes slip by and I can’t recover them.
I love my friends and family.
But I’d rather chat while we are doing something together in person than over the phone.
Sometimes it’s the wall of pain. Rheumatoid Arthritis, like all autoimmune diseases, is unpredictable. Usually I can tell in the early morning hours if my joints are going to cooperate on a given day. But sometimes they surprise me and I find that all that yard work will have to wait.
Sometimes it’s the wall of grief or sadness or longing or any of a multitude of feelings. I have gotten pretty skilled at steering clear of grief triggers when I know I have lots of things to do. I don’t listen to the songs friends post on their timelines or read too many comments on the sites for bereaved parents. But I can’t anticipate random sights, sounds or memories. I’ve been working on a room, cleaning drawers, moving stuff tucked in corners and come across a Lego man or a pellet from the air soft guns they weren’t supposed to shoot inside the house (but of course did anyway) when the boys were young. That does me in and I have to walk away.
Sometimes it’s the wall of “What difference does it make anyway?!!”This one I usually see approaching in the distance when there have been too many days and too little progress. Or a string of gray, rainy mornings. Or multiple failed attempts at fixing something. And then I throw up my hands and decide my paltry attempts at controlling my corner of the world hardly matter, so why keep doing them.
So I give in and let myself just have a day.
It doesn’t have to be a good one or a productive one or even a cheerful one. The glass can just be a glass. I don’t have to pretend it’s half-full or declare it half-empty.
And after a rest I usually remember that what I used to find impossible is now possible; what used to be hard, is often a little easier.
I am stronger and better able to carry this load.
Sorrow is no longer all I feel nor my son’s absence all I see.
And although THIS day may be lost. It’s only ONE day.
It’s perfectly OK for me to sit down with a cup of coffee, a book or a movie and let myself off the hook.
The sun will rise tomorrow and I can start over.
I will start over.
thelifeididntchoose 