This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.
- Psalm 18:24
My mother-in-law loves this verse and has walked through some serious sorrow in her life. She had a handicapped son who went through over 30 major surgeries over the years. Jay passed away days before his 15th birthday, and their family grieved deeply. It’s not the way any story should go, and yet, she talks about singing this verse in the midst of the chaos and stress of each surgery, in the midst of the grieving she’s done over the years, aching for the day she’ll embrace her boy again. She has sung this promise through each of these moments, and she sings it now, in moments of travel and traffic and grandparenting, and it’s always shifting the environment she’s in.
There’s both an acceptance of what is, whether it be sorrow or stress or traffic or a visit to the ER, AND an acknowledgement of what is truer….of what runs beneath all of that, the Love of God, the hope that death is not the end, the knowledge that our days here are numbered , but there’s healing and life ahead. She has sung this promise through tears of deep pain and through tears of great joy, and I’m reminded today, that even when our hearts are breaking, gratitude is a beautiful way to move forward in wholeness. We can grieve AND practice gratitude. We can weep AND rejoice. We can even feel the horrible sting of death , and know that Hope still rises.
So often, God has turned my deepest places of pain, into my deepest memories of His presence and my most powerful stories of His power to weep with us and remind us that the weeping is never the end. Lord, shape me into the kind of person who sings through tears and laughter, who holds onto the hope that runs deeper than our deepest sorrows, and who can accept the both/and of what is happening here in this broken world, AND what is promised in the world to come, the kingdom coming. Help me to bear witness to that hope.