Mourning Into Dancing

Grief is a greedy thief  — just when life has never seemed more fleeting and precious and filled with beauty, it can be so difficult to enjoy.

Painful "lasts"—last conversation, last time behind the wheel, last game of five hundred, last bowls of popcorn, last Sunday in worship —collide too quickly with breath-taking "firsts." First solitary meal, first trip home expecting to hear a silenced voice, first visit to the cemetery in town, staring down at a grave covered with black dirt so dry the grass seed refuses to sprout.

Though against the cemetery's rules, it's tempting to bring a wheelbarrow filled with tulip bulbs and plant them in raw earth watered by tears, hoping that by the time they bloom with a flourish in the spring, grief will have loosened its too-tight grip.

A favorite psalm speaks of both joy and sadness, mourning and dancing (Psalm 30:11-12):

You have turned my mourning into dancing;
you have taken off my sackcloth and clothed me with joy,
so that my soul may praise you and not be silent.
O Lord my God, I will give thanks to you for ever.

Life is messy. Laughter comes in the midst of tears, joy creeps in while I'm still dressed in funeral clothes. The reverse is also true, of course. A hopeful new day can dissolve into despair. Laughter can trigger tears. In the midst of life — precious, fleeting, and beautiful interwoven with love, sadness, joy and loss... O Lord my God, I will give thanks to you for ever.