Sometimes you get those rare moments where you experience the wholeness of life, and you're so grateful for it. A few Friday evenings ago, one of those moments was breathed out into the universe at a birthday party in a small downtown on a summer evening. The heat decreased as the evening wore on, there were summer dresses and outfits, sparkly jewelry, summer foods, a pink blush beverage, a pretty setting at a winery, and good laughs.
At the end of the party, three of us stood outside for a few minutes longer, where I enjoyed the sun going down and feeling the temperature drop while a steady breeze came and went. The ladies I was with are lovely and generous and open hearted and accepting. It made their sparkle even brighter that night, emanating from the inside out.
It was genuinely nice and oh, so very gentle, a soft moment that flowed across time, just for us. For the briefest second, I realized that I could be anywhere in the world, experiencing that moment. I have found that the heart has to be open to experiences or we will never develop the ability to recognize them as they come along and grab on for the ride. We have to live with intention, or we'll miss those moments. And that is a hard thing to do - live a life of intention.
Moments can be beautiful, but there's a melancholy in memories steeped in nostalgia. I think, in part, it's because we subconsciously grieve the loss of the tangible moment. The memory can live a thousand times, but the real thing? That's only once.
There is the strangest and strongest value in grief. We are often taught to "power through" or to "just keep going" when grief shows up. Then when grief becomes too much and we give into it, we are riddled with guilt for what is often misinterpreted as wallowing, an indulgence in our emotions. In trying hard to depend on ourselves to pull through, we forget that God gave us this emotion of grief because HE knows that it has value. We forget that God's son, Jesus, wept.
I have seasonal rituals. They are the tangibles that I can recreate each month of each year, for now, at least. I don't have to rely on the memories of them, not yet. The day will come, though, when life will change - with or without my blessing - and it will be up to me to both love and mourn the memories properly, or to bury them so deeply, that I will never have to feel the pain alongside the pleasure of times passed so dearly loved, now frozen.
When you grieve, it's okay. We are made to grieve. The oddity of a beautiful memory woven into that grief can be jarring. I think that sometimes, it makes the grief even deeper, while other times, it helps pull us out of our grief just a little bit more. Just don't forget the other part - the looking forward. In the hard moments, it can feel impossible to find the looking forward. I've lost track of it on more than one occasion, stuck in a hard spot, feeling outnumbered by demons and dragons.
The trick to the looking forward is that it's often up to us to create it, that new path beyond the old battered trail we left behind. Then, life gets funny and odd and mixed up, and sometimes, it creates the looking forward for us. I never hedge my bets on that, though, instead choosing to try to map out my next way forward. The life that will happen while I make my plan is part of the looking forward, I just don't know it yet.
I'm in that place right now, a different path coming up sooner than later. There's plenty of the old that is beautiful, but there is more ahead if I'm open to it. I hope that wherever you are and whatever your path, you find your looking forward while remembering the beautiful yesterdays. Life is rich and full and hard and sorrowful and everything else in between. Be kind to yourself. Lean into the moments, they'll be gone soon enough.
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