an education of sorts
I am learning to come to terms with the fact that my life is both beautiful and hard.
I am learning to live content in the presence of both grief and joy.
This is a tension not unfamiliar to me.
When my mother passed away I received my first taste of the bitter and the beautiful in one life-altering mouthful.
Season after season, the birth of two new children, life’s highs and lows, brought me face to face with both missing my mother and loving my life. Being grateful and being sad. Simultaneously. Constantly. A new steady.
And now. After all that practice. I have new lessons to learn. A new measure for measure education in the same school. The school of Loss and Suffering paired with Life and Adventure. Dynamic change and static discomfort.
It’s impossible to drink of one without tasting the other.
This next analogy feels amateur for certain – but sometimes my brain requires Small Thinking.
It’s like cereal and milk.
The joy and the grief.
They’re all mixed up together in this giant bowl and my lot is to consume both in nearly equal portions.
I can’t swallow down the cereal without the milk taking a ride along in the spoon.
But I’ve been serving up this breakfast dish for so long that the bitter tastes a little less so and there’s certainly more Cheerios than two percent.
I don’t want to be afraid to rise and shine because the breakfast options aren’t changing.
I don’t want to live in fear when there’s so much lovely here too.
And I refuse to rename the pain with a euphemism because it is very much a piece of the part of the whole of my life. And calling it what it is, allowing it to have its role but not more than its role, is one way I walk in that tension. One way I swallow the cereal without choking on the milk.
When I name my grief, it lessens its power.
When I challenge myself to carry a bit of both the tonic and the toxin, I walk a little straighter and I think a lot clearer.
I am learning (and it’s always a work in progress, a construction zone, an already and a not yet) to let my life be lived in the tension of just and unjust, of soaring and crawling, of sunshine and storms.
13 Comments
Tab
Beautifully stated. I love the analogy, and simple is all that is needed to see a bit clearer.
I love the strength and insight God is pouring over you. He will/is using you in mighty ways friend. Keep Him in front and you will continue to find comfort in the midst of much pain.
laceykeigley
Thank you Tab.
d powell
So when are you going to write and publish a book?
laceykeigley
When I build that little house by the mountain stream.
Hilary
So beautifully put my friend. You are deeply loved. ❤️
laceykeigley
As are you, sweet friend.
Sara
An education we neither love nor choose.
But an education chosen with purpose by our good Father.
The good and the bad. The lovely and the gross. The precious and the putrid.
All part of the whole.
All making me more like Him.
Thank you for the brave words.
I need brave words.
laceykeigley
“All making me more like Him”
yes. I hope so. Such a hard remaking.
Andrea Beam
This is a great post. I named my blog “Sunshine & Rain” for this very reason. I, too, have learned the HARD and painful way that life is full of both. There’s sunshine and there’s storms. Sometimes there’s more rain than sun and we have to find a way to live in the clouds. Not easy.
I don’t know what you’re facing, but I wish you and your children well! 🙂
laceykeigley
Living in the clouds – yep. Not always easy. But the alternative choices are no good either. 🙂
karen
yes. thank you for these words. and the permission to name the grief and the pain.
Nikkie
Naming the grief.
I like that.
It does lessen its power for sure.
Journeying with you.
Standing for you.
Show up well this week, friend.
laceykeigley
thank you.