Shadow Stories
It has been a particularly hard day. I find I am missing my mom more deeply and yet it feels like the grace for grief is shrinking. I can feel the expectations of others pushing me to move past my sadness and into life again. Maybe those are just the expectations I have put on myself. At any rate, it is not working.
I just want my mom to tell me it’s going to be all right. The pressure is mounting inside and I am crumbling to pieces again. Mom? Is it going to be all right?
I tell my sister this tonight as we are texting. “I am 10 pounds too heavy and grief doesn’t feel attractive on me and I cannot find anything to wear that fits. Who does a girl go to when she doesn’t feel pretty?” Her mama. My sister tells me,” It’s going to be all right.” And I weep.
Is it?
Tonight as I step outside my door, the trees are casting their shadows on the house and I am stirred to melancholy. “Oh” I hear myself whisper. They are telling their shadow stories of another world. I see heaven glimmering on the siding of my house. This world is so temporary. So very temporary. Too fleeting to worry about 10 pounds or grey hair sprouting at my roots. Too short to give worry another moment of my life. Too short not to love myself or my life or all the beauty God has given me. In a little while I will see my mama again.
“It’s going to be all right” I hear Jesus say this time. He is, after all the best comforter of all. All the kind words my mama used to say? He gave them to her to give to me. He is not only the author of love. He is love.
Thank you Jesus for loving me in all of my mess. I am indeed a mess. But you? You specialize in making beauty out of ashes. I have quite a few of those.
Isaiah 61:3 ~”to comfort all who mourn, and provide for those who grieve in Zion— to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of joy instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair.”