Life is Sweet and Sad

I really dislike days like today. They are melancholy days. Days when my mind battles between holding on to what I know is true and bordering on crashing into total loss of what is true.

I am bordering on wanting to deny the emotions that flood my heart or just embrace them – experience them and then move on. It seems an easy choice. I suppose. I know if I hide, deny or stuff them they will just come another day.

I dislike days like today when I am on the verge of tears. A day of mourning. A day of great sadness of my soul. A day when I miss the tenderness of a mother’s love, her touch – my heart aches for it. I want to sit next to her have her stroke my hair and tell me that she loves me. You know, actually I have never experience my mother sitting there stroking my hair, but I have imagined the tenderness of that touch. My heart mourns the loss of what was never to be.

In the movie Win-Dixie there is a line where the little girl Opal says “Life is sweet and sad. It’s hard to separate them.” I thought about that today. In the sadness of my heart today there was a sweet reminder from God. A sweet, sweet reminder that He can and does fill all my longings. He loves me , He will hold me with the tenderness of a mother and stroke my hair.

God has also given me the sweet gift of spiritual mothers. Mothers who have mothered me from a distance as I have watched them. Mothers who have loved me, helped me to grow. And a mother who God uses continually in my life to love me as I believe a mother would love a daughter.

Today has been a sweet and sad day. A melancholy day. A day of reflections. A day of mourning. A day of remembering.

There is another sweet part of today, as God has shown me that He can use me to love other women with the heart of a mother. I can do this because God has shown me how to love with a mother’s heart.

I have to hold on tight to the sweetness of that for the enemy desires to steal it away. Then enemy would love for me to have a day like today turn into two or three or a week.

Yes I still dislike days like today because they come without warning. One moment I am going about my day and the next moment my heart is heavy and tears are freely flowing.

I know that God is using days like today to grow me, help me process through the memories, the sadness, the longings and aches of my heart. He uses them to draw me closer to Him.

Closer to Him where every pain is healed. Every loss is gain. Every emptiness is filled. Every sadness is turned to joy and every tear collected in a bottle.

The LORD your God is with you, he is mighty to save. He will take great delight in you, he will quiet you with his love, he will rejoice over you with singing."Zeph 3:17 …how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings… Luke 13:43 But we proved to be gentle among you, as a nursing mother tenderly cares for her own children. 1 Thess 2:7