It’s always there…..

sadness.  Sometimes its in the background, sometimes it interrupts your thoughts throughout the day and sometimes it’s just plain heavy.  But it’s always there.  You learn to live with it.  It’s familiar.  It’s now a constant companion.

I’m not talking about the overwhelming sadness that accompanies the initial grief of losing someone. I’m talking about the sadness that is there a midst the happy moments of life.  Every step away from grief brings its own grief. I know, weird, but true.

Remember the little song “Don’t worry, be happy”?   yeah, so our culture.  Pushing us constantly to live in a perpetual state of happiness.  Have you been to a book store lately or glanced at the magazine rack in the check out lane?  Pursuit of happiness is a common title/headline.  Have you every looked on the underside of an embroidery project?  Threads are all mixed together in a big mess of colors, but when you turn it over there is a beautiful picture.  We are afraid of the “dark threads” of life.   But how can you experience, truly experience, the good things in life without truly experiencing the bad?   We have a plethora of drugs to help us with the bad days.  Our culture has made us believe there is something wrong with expressing and feeling an honest reaction to the cards we’re dealt in life.   How do you experience life without experiencing life?  Where is the growth to come from?

Over the last almost two years of being a widow I’ve had to navigate the road of grief.  There was no option of having someone do it for me. I’ve read many of the Psalms.  Seeing real grief, real anger, real sadness and real happiness is comforting.

The sadness that is the ebb and flow of my life now is not debilitating.  It’s a sadness over what could have been. A sadness that my life was irrevocably changed against my will.  A sadness over lost dreams for me and those I love. I’m learning to be okay with, at first, the unwelcome companion called sadness.

So what do you do with this sadness?  You live.  You cry with those around you who are sad because now you get it.  You live with the Hope that some day there will be no more sadness.  And you use it to really appreciate the happy moments in life.

“He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”

Revelation 21:4

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