A chasm divides my heart, shattering it into two pieces.

Gripping my hands to each emotion, holding black in one fist and white in the other fist.

Death stings

Life breathes hope.

Death and Life swirl within,

Does death live on one side of my soul while life grows of the other side?

or

Do joy and sorrow coexist, as one, within my life?

 

Joy and Sorrow

Life and Death

Hope and Despair

Anticipation and Dread

 

Bubbling forth with some new experiences I longed to text her this week. To shoot her a text with an update on life just like it used to be, before 4 months ago when everything changed.

An open door is before me, one of great excitement yet weaved within the fabrics of the story, threads of hardships.

More than anything I need. I want. I long. for my cheerleader and prayer warrior beside me in this season.

She was the one who breathed life into me when I was losing endurance to keep running.

But her race on earth ended too soon.

And here I am, still racing, with one steep mountain before me.

 

My heart pulled each direction,

The tug to the left;  loss, heartache, tears… buckets of tears.

To the right;  the tug of hope, life, courage.

 

Joy and Sorrow, they are one,

“Sorrowful yet always rejoicing,”

“Our hearts ache, but we always have joy.”

“Grieving yet always rejoicing”

(2 Corinthians 6:10)

 

tears and joy, united

heartache and hope, fused together

We aren’t mourning, sorrowful and then become joyful. We don’t put off mourning, hardships, sorrow and then the next step is joy.

Sorrow and joy, are held hand in hand.

I am learning, sorrow and joy are weaved together.

My heart isn’t about living with these emotions separated, but rather together.

We can live this life in sorrow yet rejoicing.

We don’t have to forgo joy in our sorrow, we push into, right in the middle of the tears.

Joy found IN sorrow

Rejoicing IN tears

Living with sorrow and joy intertwined, that is joy of substance. That joy is pure, because it isn’t s superficial jolly joy.

It is joy stained with tears.

With sorrow, our joy can be increased…not decreased.

With sorrow and tears joy tastes different on our tongue…a sweeter joy.

We can’t understand, real weighty joy of substance until we’ve been walked down a journey of hardships.

We mourn with hope. Our sorrow is temporary. And this is how we can be sorrowful yet always rejoicing.

Because this is not the end. Our sorrow is not the final story written in our book of life.

Today, in the weeks to come, I move onward, taking steps of hope, all the while death still burns.
I open doors towards new seasons of  life with many tears accompanying me along the way as I miss my sweet aunt.

“We must focus on Jesus, the source and goal of our faith. He saw the joy ahead of him, so he endured death on the cross and ignored the disgrace it brought him. Then he received the highest position in heaven, the one next to the throne of God.” Hebrews 12:2