One Hand for Sorrow Another for Joy

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 It’s still spring!! I marvel at that because of our late snowstorms which made me wonder if I was in “The Long Winter”. I’ve often read Laura Ingalls Wilder’s “Long Winter” but had no burning desire to experience it. I have to admit the first late flurry of snow after I came home from a trip to New York excited me because I was just about to tap trees and wanted to get a good supply of syrup in the pantry. Now I’m glad to have that over and have the flowers coming up, birds singing, a last batch of syrup ready to can on the stove today and be ready to move on to pulling weeds and planting garden.

  Spring is such a season of hope and joy. But for some it isn’t.

  That is always true isn’t it?

  For some it isn’t.

  Can make me embarrassed about feeling upbeat and joyous.

  When I had a good friend who was struggling through depression after her husband’s death I listened to her frustration and rage as others went on about their business while she struggled,wept and ached. She told me once “I just wanted to strangle people or slap them. How dare they be happy while my lumberjack husband is dead?”

  I remember too the spring when I had a sick child in the hospital  I was struggling to think let alone find joy in spring. I walked in a fog barely noticing birds, flowers, mushrooms and then she was home and I still looked at life differently. Flowers were harbors of bees which could threaten my little girl’s life, birdsongs sounded less cheerful and mushrooms lay rotting where our neighbor had dropped them off on the kitchen counter while I busied myself sterilizing everything and everybody. A trip to a berry patch in summer when she seemed fairly well recovered turned nightmarish as she stood on a ground bee nest screaming and writhing and I did not have any medication in the car.

  So this spring I ‘m aware of the sorrow and suffering of others.

  I have friends struggling with sick children, death, dying, grief. Which makes me less callous and I alternately shout and whisper prayers for them. But simultaneously I am rejoicing with the land as it brings forth new life. I am enjoying even the cough of my little grandson and his cry when he falls and bumps his chin for the umpteenth time since it was not that long ago that I could only hear his voice in my imagination!  I am looking forward to a snatch of time with my little granddaughter too! And in the meantime I am dreaming up adventures of wiggling our toes in the sand and kneading bread dough on the kitchen counter. “You make a mess and Grandma will make bread and when we are done we’ll throw your mess away and bake mine. Then we’ll have a tea party….”,I mentally rehearse our conversation.

  I think getting older might be the cause of this tendency to hold sorrow lightly in one hand and grasp joy tightly with the other. It seems to me a gift from God. I’m grateful! I look forward to heaven where there will be no more suffering and no more sorrow and my kids always added, “Lots of peanutbutter sandwiches too Mama!” and in the in between time I enjoy little glimpse of it here and now!

 

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