I have to look at the bigger and bigger picture. That endings are actually beginnings… That even death is a beginning…
Heaven is the end of seasons and all things bittersweet, because it’s eternal rather than temporary. My great friend and fellow blogger, Mary Kate of Choosing Grace calls this, “an eternal perspective,” and she’s right. The eternal perspective is a filter that we who have life and freedom through faith in the name of Jesus Christ can throw on like a pair of sunglasses. With our Eternal Perspective Sunglasses, we face the glare of strife and discouragement and fear and all the things that roar like toothless lions against our faith. Christians can use the eternal perspective to put down bitterness when our prayers aren’t answered the way we want them addressed. When the people God has given us don’t satisfy our deepest needs – for comfort and understanding and encouragement…
I used to roll my eyes at this kind of talk. I used to box it up and place it out of my way on the Platitudes Shelf. That’s before I knew that cliches have weight. Before I started to understand why “old people” don’t care… They have begun to separate what really matters from what is just a lot of pointless work. Jesus said it this way: “Martha, Martha, you take pains and are troubled about many things.” 42″But one thing is necessary; Maryam has chosen that good part for herself which will not be taken away from her.” (Aramaic Bible in Plain English.)
I was thinking about the Scripture verse about joy coming in the morning. And then the moniker, Son of the Morning came to me… Is that a reference to God or the devil..? I couldn’t remember, but I know now, that the reference is of Lucifer who fell and became satan. My ignorance notwithstanding, Christ is the Son of God and also, the Sun of heaven:
2And I saw The Holy City, New Jerusalem, descending from Heaven from beside God, prepared like a bride adorned for her husband. 3And I heard a great voice from Heaven that said, “Behold, the Tabernacle of God is with the children of men, and he dwells with them and they shall be his people and the same God is with them and shall be their God*. 4And he* shall wipe away every tear from their eyes, and from now on there shall not be death, neither grieving, nor clamor, neither shall there be disease again, for His sake*.” []
22And I saw no Temple in it, for THE LORD JEHOVAH God Almighty, he is its Temple*. 23And The Lamb and The City do not need the Sun or the Moon to illuminate it, for the glory of God illuminates it, and The Lamb is its lamp. 24And the nations* walk in its light and the Kings of The Earth bring glory* to it. 25And its gates shall not be shut by day, for there shall be no night there. 26And they shall bring to it the glory and honor of the nations. 27There shall not be anything defiled there, or one who makes defilement or lies, but only those who are written in The Book* of the Lamb.
Revelation 21 (Aramaic Bible in Plain English.) The joy that comes in the morning is Jesus Christ. More and more, I am convinced of this. And the spiritual morning is on its way: The night is almost gone, and the day is near. Therefore let us lay aside the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light. (New American Standard Bible.)
Our hearts need that armor for all kinds of transitions, like those that follow confrontations. I don’t know about you, but in my life, it hasn’t been easy facing problems in friendships. The hurdles set before my friends and me have to first be cleared – no promises about whether that will happen cleanly – and then, there has to be a change. Radiation kills tissue. But it’s a life-saving strategy for dealing with cancer. Sometimes, in friendships, we approach the destruction of our connection in ways that kill the relationship. We pretend. We sweep under the rug. We grow the distance between us with silence. Then everything real about it ends up dead.
Maybe I should say: The hurdle means there has been a change in the friendship. And what we do at that point decides what comes into the fracture – more honesty and love and freedom…or, emotional necrosis.
Some feelings, like the ones I’m thinking of as I blog to you now – the bittersweet ones that come up when things change; when transitions occur; when things we’ve grown used to having in our lives as touchstones…end – are parochial and common and tempt us to be embarrassed for feeling them. My 3 babes moving on up from 1st, 3rd, and 5th grade… The beginning of one of our “guaranteed 18 summers” arriving, yet feeling only a breath away from its end… Seeing kindergarten graduations painted all over social media, which of course, dredges up all my feelings about that mile marker…and its place in our past. It’s hard to accept that that happened more than a year ago now.
Even if it is a cliche, the impact of these losses and changes on our souls is not lessened. I see and feel them: Me holding the bendy stem of a dandelion that’s gone to seed. Except, in this case, I want to hold on to the seeds. The wind is ripping them away in directions I don’t control. And, the more common the experience, the more precious is that thread of connection between all of us who feel and have felt and will feel it.
You’re so right. Allowing myself space to feel that even if it is a cliche…
A friend and mother of three, Angelina Dryfhout said this to me when I pointed out my ironic belief about the profound nature of cliche and commonly-felt reactions to the mundane experiences of living. Common or not, mundane or not, big or not, changes test our hearts. And these changes break our hearts…a little each time.
My youngest child (outside the womb) said on the last day of school, “I want to stay in first grade forever. I want to stay this age.” And I realized that traditional education teaches us to leave things behind and mourn with the passing of each year. I wasn’t blessed with the gift of being an effective home-school 👩🏻🏫 teacher, but when I did home-school, my kids never had to say goodbye 👋🏾 forever. Goodbye to their teacher and her peculiarities…
What did I say in response to these declarations from a girl who will be entering second grade when summer is over?
“Do you know why I understand what you’re going through? Because every year and every day you’re growing up. You need me less and less. But you know what? I love you more and more!”
The truth is: They need me differently as time goes by. But I miss the old ways that they needed me.