I am no expert on sorrow, although I’ve lived long enough to know that none of us is exempt. There are no detours wide enough to navigate your way around suffering. No bank account big enough to buffer those you love. No life untouched by loss.
Ever found that the more familiar you are with something, the less likely you are to notice it? Like the earth turning each day to catch the first bright rays of the sun. Or the liquidy feel of water as it rolls over your tongue. Or the shifting swoosh of sound that fills our days – from morning bird songs to the evening breeze?
September has long been my favorite month, and not just because I get to celebrate my birthday. But because it feels like the climax of the year, as if every seed and limb and leaf has been working together for just this moment to release its fruit before ceding to fall.
I have long admired Tessa Afshar, a romance novelist who crafts historical fiction set around the time of Christ. As a kid lit fan, I’m not a big reader of adult fiction. And I confess that I stopped reading romance novels about the time I realized that lasting love involves more laundry than long walks on the beach.
When the kids are gone and summer is flying fast and the morning chill portends to fall. When the news is bleak with buckled houses and panicked faces and fierce mobs shooting in the streets. When hopes fade and fears swell and what’s on the horizon seems like more than I can face, I can either give into the gloom, let it swallow me like an ocean, roll me into its dark depths.
Wife, mom, writer, friend, sharing God in my everyday life through “Faith Notes.”