Perspective

This morning I woke up to the headache that just doesn’t want to go away. Again. It was definitively worse Sunday, yesterday it started backing off (for which I was SO GRATEFUL) and today it seems to be trying to make an encore appearance. Such is life for me this time of year in the desert where I live – and which my allergist tells me I am pretty much completely allergic to.

Yeah, I was feeling a little sorry for myself as I dragged my butt out of bed.

I did get my boys through breakfast and out the door without any fighting, bribing or threats for which I rewarded them each with two of those funky shaped rubber bracelets the kids all love these days. They were thrilled. Now they are each sporting a dancing guy (Mommy doing the happy dance that everyone got along this morning) and an ear (for listening) and my headache didn’t get the burst of blood pressure to inch it along towards migraine status.

Yay! Feeling a little less sorry for myself and slightly more hopeful.

I got home and ate some breakfast, poured some coffee and settled in to my Word. I’m trying to catch up on the daily reading and am working through Psalms right now. (I love Psalms. I love how I can read these words that someone wrote THOUSANDS of years ago in a culture and life completely different from my own and yet those words reflect the very same struggles in my own heart and my own life. It always causes me to stop and rethink things a little bit. Remember what my priorities should be and look at where they really are. Reminds me that I am just a small part of a large picture. Get a grip on my perspective.) Anyway, I finished my reading and started putting together my Word for the Day for the blog here, pulling out the scriptures that really tugged at me.

Then Papa and Nana called. One of their dogs died last night from some kind of bug bite or sting. Apparently it was pretty horrific and painful and it shook them both up. It broke my heart to listen to them tell me how it all happened and hear the heavy grief in their voices. You see, those dogs aren’t just Papa and Nana’s pets. They are their family. And it is always hard to watch someone you love suffer, no matter how many legs they have.

As Papa was talking to me and just sharing his heart, I happened to look up at my computer screen. I had just pulled up Psalm 36:5-9.

Your unfailing love, O LORD, is as vast as the heavens;
Your faithfulness reaches beyond the clouds.
Your righteousness is like the mighty mountains,
Your justice like the ocean depths.
You care for people and animals alike, O LORD.
How precious is your unfailing love, O God!
All humanity finds shelter
In the shadow of your wings.
You feed them from the abundance of your own house,
Letting them drink from your rivers of delight.
For you are the fountain of life,
The light by which we see.
(Emphasis mine)

Just below that, I’d pulled up Psalm 42:5-6

Why am I discouraged?
Why so sad?
I will put my hope in God!
I will praise him again –
My Savior and my God!
Now I am deeply discouraged
But I will remember your kindness...

And I’d flipped my pages around while talking with Papa and run up on this, Psalm 126:5 & 6:

Those who plant in tears
Will harvest with shouts of joy.
They weep as they go to plant their seed,
But they sing as they return with the harvest.

The note in my bible on these two verses says:

God’s ability to restore life is beyond our understanding. Forests burn down and are able to grow back. Broken bones heal. Even grief is not a permanent condition. Our tears can be seeds that will grow into a harvest of joy because God is able to bring good out of tragedy. When burdened by sorrow, know that your times of grief will end and that you will again find joy. We must be patient as we wait. God’s great harvest of joy is coming!
- Life Application Study Bible, New Living Translation, Tyndale 1996


Again… another perspective smacker for me. All I could do was sit and listen to Papa and Nana and tell them that I loved them and was praying for them and am there for anything they might need. My heart breaks for them. I know too well how the rawness of grief penetrates your very bones and feels like it has become a part of your very DNA. How that grief wraps its tentacles about each nucleic strand so that everything you have ever been and will ever be feels like it will be somehow touched or tainted by it.

But the heartbeat of life keeps beating and whether you want to or not, you get pulled and pushed along in the bloodstream of it. Soon, but not soon enough – and yet somehow without you realizing it – those tentacles of grief begin to weaken and fade. One day you experience something and are surprised by the laugh or the smile that popped out of you. You realize that the oppressive hold that grief held on you isn’t quite as strong as it was before. Maybe the little sucker cup thingies on the tentacles are drying up or something like that. You just know that they aren’t quite the same as they were.

More time passes, you continue to get drawn along in life and the tentacles eventually dissolve. All that is left is their impression, their image, their memory. Those stay and in some ways are welcome companions in your journey of life. Battle scars. Things that you look back on and remember and take strength from, even when they send out reminder pings of pain.

You lived through it.

You sowed in tears. And one day, some day, you reaped with joy. Sometimes without even realizing it.