shades of grace: not either or, but BOTH!

i spent over ten hours in the car yesterday...driving from my childhood home back to my current home, which i guess you'd call my adult home? i always feel like i will hurt feelings if i call this my "home" now, over the one where i grew up. quite honestly the word home does evoke feelings of familiar comfort and a specific address on a quaint tree-lined texas street and that will always be my home, where my mom and dad live and always welcome us back...but this now-home, it is where my husband lives, and that's where my home is now. with him. and our boys.....and that's just how it's supposed to be.

i sat in the passenger seat for hours, staring out the windows....watching texas grass greener than green, sprawl and roll and cover hills and lay out beautifully before me, for what seemed to go on forever. it was majestic. i kept thinking of how much i missed it. the forever green grass, the quaint barns and the metallic shiny silos and the windmills peppering the fields. it was a beauty that was familiar and dreamy, cozy and somehow just let my heart breathe out an exhaling release...

it was so different than the terrain i was now used to out west, where mesas and mountains and brown dirt take over.....

yet, the same way i grew to love the green...i've fallen in love with how God created the mountains and the sunsets to turn pink in an instant and marvel in the forever desert fields that spill into the orange purple sky after dinner....

do i love them both? can i possibly?

yes. they both hold memories and tangible sights and sounds. they both hold dear people that i love in each zipcode.....but my heart doesn't have to be torn, it just has to be enlarged. room enough to share both. it doesn't need to be feel bad or apologize for leaving home, it can just grow more space....it can home a bright green plastered field of bluebonnets state of mind juxtaposed next to the pink hue of the mountain at sunset mood...it can be both. i am learning this....i've always felt the pressure to choose one or the other.....but i needn't do so. i just need see how HE has enlarged the real estate in my heart...

the only reason i know you can handle both, is because i have learned that with grief. with joy. and with pain.

i think somewhere in life, we get tricked into thinking it's one or the other. for life. it will always feel this wonderful...or it will always be this dreadfully awful. we forget about the real estate possibility of growing and adding on and adding in....

i know there are seasons in my life where i've camped out on both in the past, more on the latter  probably at times, i'm afraid to say.

i watched today as a HUGE rain cloud hung over this tiny patch of land, among the forever green fields....that sacred little spot was getting the gloom and darkness. but from far away i could see it wouldn't last and it would be moving soon....and even as we drove, i could see it passing over the next plot of land within minutes....soon that once gloomy patch....was filled with glorious warm sunshine and everything under it beamed....the grass almost shone with excitement, now no longer entranced by the shady gray that was before.

    "The heavens declare the glory of God and the sky above proclaims his handiwork...."                                                                                     Psalm 19:1

i watched this transpire over silly blades of grass and wheat and cotton and heard a whisper in my heart....this is joy, this is pain....they will cascade over one another and interrupt each other and champion the other and rescue the other.....this is how a heart can live with both.

anytime we have loss, any kind of loss of the heart...anything taken from us and our heart, stolen painfully or lost accidentally or given away in bad choices...we go the sad place. the place where we think our heart will die and rot to for an oblivion. we silently give up. and give in. and feel the gray will take over and the darkness will win.

however, if life and His grace-history has taught us anything, it's that joy comes in the morning. and that cloud WILL move. it just will. we will be able to house the same intolerable unbearable ugly pain in the same heart, the same patch of land, that dark cloud was hung over.....with joy. we will laugh at a joke or funny moment, we will smile back at a goofy grin covered in peanut butter, we will feel the freedom and beauty of the air in our hair as we drive with the windows down, we will feel our hearts race as we sing loudly in the car, we will melt at the yummiest savory bite of a great meal, we will fall into a comfy familiar hug of a loved one or a friend, even an unexpected kind word from a stranger at checkout brings us a new joy....we might even tap our toes to a drumbeat at the same exact time we are crying in church singing the same sad song filled with good Truth...all at the same time. it can happen. because our hearts don't have to be torn, they don't have to sit in a corner and just wither away in sadness. or gloom. they just need to be enlarged....and only God can do that.

He did that in my heart.....i live with constant pain over the absence of our daughter..in our lives and in our home. YET, HE has graciously given me hope in big ways and small ways to let me know that every morning brings a new sunset and new mercies and most importantly that one day, this pain will melt into eternity and be restored and redeemed in Heaven....i hold fast to my Hope while my heart aches here on earth. i cry at little girls around me turning five and starting ballet but i cling to my eternal home with her and my GOD. i ache on days where it seems to be too much and then the mercy floods into my life and my heart with something as little as a sweet hymn or a good hug or a laugh that makes me cry my gut hurts so much.....i let the clouds hover but i KNOW they will part and sun-SONshine will come again and bring me the warmth and the comfort...in fact, just as we know the bright sun is merely just hiding behind the dark clouds in the sky, i know HE is with me even in the dark times....the most beautiful and most trusting example of faithfulness is found in the Word, His love story, His promise story...HE is there, HE never forsakes my hurting heart days and HE always faithfully meets me in the days around them with His steadfast love in His word, no matter what is happening around me....

just as the clouds moved and parted and let the green land soak up the day's warm bright rays....our hearts gray clouds will break apart and float about and let light shine in the broken parts. even the sunshine can peek pretty brightly through pieced-apart breaking-down sky clouds, blinding even some days with glory rays peeking through, right? why can't our heart do the same?...

we must notice this. we must THANK him for this grace, these eyes to see such mercy happening...and the more we do it, might we begin to focus on the sun coming back instead of so much of it's absence when it's gone. might we revel and marvel so much in it's joy and beauty and gladness, that when the clouds do come again, we have etched the sun-SON-joy so much in our minds, that we KNOW to anticipate and wait for it's return in our hearts? we already remember what it's colors were and how it felt to be under it's intense gaze. we know it's promises to us and the faithfulness proven in the past....

even the picture i snapped quickly at the storm clouds BEHIND me in the mirror while looking ALSO forward at the clear sky ahead of me reminded me of how my eyes can look at both dark and light and feel safe in both, as i grimaced at the heaviness behind me in the car mirror i see that he carried me through it and YET i am literally driving towards safer bright blue open sky, peace and open baby blue for miles and miles and then some.

"Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful."                                                             Hebrews 10:23

 which takes me all back to the picture that started this whole thinkin' process for me. there can be good, even in the bad....there can be beauty even in the breakdown and darkness.....in the middle of these storm clouds, this simple utility poll wasn't just a poll for me and my eyes or my heart....no, sprawling green for miles behind it and all around it....my eyes saw a cross. dark heavy clouds above, but HOPE planted firmly in that ground shouted to me GLORY.....i saw that cross symbol stand out to me and the dark clouds seemed to fade in the distance......

this is my hope, my ongoing prayer...that my heart and others would be able to hold fast in the darkness and heavy times, to what they know WILL be coming, hope in the splitting of those clouds soon and peace and rest and joy. the joy set before us because of HIS sweet precious Cross gift...this is why we endure. and it's my prayer that we do so with grace and mercy and kindness and gentleness and LOOK for the GODbeauty in it all......

i hummed this hymn all weekend long while in texas....then when i started to see the trusting in the storm and the beauty of the returning sunshine on the green land all at the same time-moment happening in my head and heart....i began to smile and tears filled my eyes as i knew i had the perfect song in my heart and ready on my lips..... to sing and hum in that car yesterday......glory!!

Tis so sweet to trust in Jesus, Just to take Him at His Word; Just to rest upon His promise, And to know, “Thus saith the Lord!” Refrain: Jesus, Jesus, how I trust Him! How I’ve proved Him o’er and o’er; Jesus, Jesus, precious Jesus! Oh, for grace to trust Him more! Oh, how sweet to trust in Jesus, Just to trust His cleansing blood; And in simple faith to plunge me ’Neath the healing, cleansing flood! Yes, ’tis sweet to trust in Jesus, Just from sin and self to cease; Just from Jesus simply taking Life and rest, and joy and peace. I’m so glad I learned to trust Thee, Precious Jesus, Savior, Friend; And I know that Thou art with me, Wilt be with me to the end.

1. • Oh, for grace to trust Him more!