
This time of year is full.
I talk so much about joy here...finding your joy, living your joy, allowing joy. Yes.
AND then there is the dark side of grief. loss. emptiness.
Joy and sorrow. Can we stretch ourselves into both corners, feel fully everything as it arises, without judgment or fixing? Joy is the easy part. Can we make space for its shadow?
Tonite, I am acutely aware of dear ones going through brutally tough times and I want to honour your struggle here.
:: Kelli in New Orleans watching your 10 year old son undergo painful, invasive medical testing to find out what the next round of treatments/plan/outlook is with the Hirschprungs disease you live with.
:: Heidi full of pain for past hurts, struggling to find peace with yourself, sad and frustrated and despairing that you are in this place, longing to just love yourself.
:: Elaine approaching the date of your son's brain surgery after months and months of sorrow and work, empty of peace and joy, exhausted, yearning for your own healing too.
:: Amy's sweet baby Gabe is in the hospital with pneumonia.
:: and for every mama who is caring for a sick child, mourning, exhausted, lonely, overwhelmed with too much to do, ending a relationship, missing someone you love, sad, wishing things were different...
It is hard to lean into the darkness, to let it have its way with us.
When Death Comes - Mary Oliver
When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn;
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse
to buy me, and snaps the purse shut:
when death comes
like the measles - pox;
when death comes
like an iceburg between the shoulder blades,
I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?
And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
as I consider eternity as another possibility,
and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,
and each name a comfortable music in the mouth
tending as all music does, toward silence,
and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.
When it's over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was a bridegroom taking the world into my arms.
When it's over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened
or full of argument.
I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.
~ Mary Oliver