Mourning & Dancing
I'm subscribed to a daily devotional through She Reads Truth and the portion of the Bible we're going through now is part of a series entitled Mourning & Dancing. How so like God to flood my inbox with daily reminders for this short period during a dark night of my soul to the duality of mourning and dancing.
It is easy to get bogged down by the weightiness of my grief, the sorrows of our infertility, our neighbors' hunger, our friends' discrimination, our world's brokenness. And it's just as easy to focus on smiles, cat videos, participating in #thankfulnesschallenge, celebrating new jobs and successes. I think sometimes we get caught up in asking God to "turn [our] mourning into dancing" (Psalm 31:11a) or being "so very happy, I've got the love of Jesus in my heart" that we minimize ours and others' grief and mourning. We create a circle to keep the sadness separate from the joy and tell ourselves, "your job is to make sure all the sadness stays inside of it" (Joy, Inside Out). Or we take things to the other extreme and deny ourselves any pleasure whatsoever or air our grief through #beautifulmesses and #emotionallywrecked pictures on Instagram that we unintentionally shame those who are dancing and full of vibrant happiness. We over-revel in the fact that "crying helps me slow down and obsess over the weight of life's problems" (Sadness, Inside Out).
But God has been challenging me during these past few weeks and in this larger season of infertility these past 3+ years to hold both mourning AND dancing simultaneously. To find ways to talk about how good it is to experience both simultaneously. And how painfully difficult. But I'm finding richness in holding both together, allowing for the complexity of laughing at a picture of my niece smirking through my tears of loss or grieving at the birth of a child that's not mine. It is deepening my processing of infertility, creating spaces for me to learn how to be quick to offer grace when offhanded comments slice me like a knife. It reminds me to not stop the tears or true smiles that spring up when someone asks how I'm really doing in any given moment. Joy and Sadness are two sides of the same coin, meant to be held together and all the messiness that entails; the groaning of childbirth longing for a new creation that has already come in Jesus. Moments turn Joyful because of Sadness. And Sadness gets turned to Joy in the morning. What I have forgotten is how to hold both mourning and celebration together, never minimizing one for the other.
We must never stop mourning brokenness. It is right to mourn.
We must never cease to celebrate life and beauty. It is right to dance.
In this space where I feel all the feels in a very Inside Out way, "may we remember that He is present with us, He is good, and He is faithful (She Reads Truth)." Amen and amen.
It is easy to get bogged down by the weightiness of my grief, the sorrows of our infertility, our neighbors' hunger, our friends' discrimination, our world's brokenness. And it's just as easy to focus on smiles, cat videos, participating in #thankfulnesschallenge, celebrating new jobs and successes. I think sometimes we get caught up in asking God to "turn [our] mourning into dancing" (Psalm 31:11a) or being "so very happy, I've got the love of Jesus in my heart" that we minimize ours and others' grief and mourning. We create a circle to keep the sadness separate from the joy and tell ourselves, "your job is to make sure all the sadness stays inside of it" (Joy, Inside Out). Or we take things to the other extreme and deny ourselves any pleasure whatsoever or air our grief through #beautifulmesses and #emotionallywrecked pictures on Instagram that we unintentionally shame those who are dancing and full of vibrant happiness. We over-revel in the fact that "crying helps me slow down and obsess over the weight of life's problems" (Sadness, Inside Out).
But God has been challenging me during these past few weeks and in this larger season of infertility these past 3+ years to hold both mourning AND dancing simultaneously. To find ways to talk about how good it is to experience both simultaneously. And how painfully difficult. But I'm finding richness in holding both together, allowing for the complexity of laughing at a picture of my niece smirking through my tears of loss or grieving at the birth of a child that's not mine. It is deepening my processing of infertility, creating spaces for me to learn how to be quick to offer grace when offhanded comments slice me like a knife. It reminds me to not stop the tears or true smiles that spring up when someone asks how I'm really doing in any given moment. Joy and Sadness are two sides of the same coin, meant to be held together and all the messiness that entails; the groaning of childbirth longing for a new creation that has already come in Jesus. Moments turn Joyful because of Sadness. And Sadness gets turned to Joy in the morning. What I have forgotten is how to hold both mourning and celebration together, never minimizing one for the other.
We must never stop mourning brokenness. It is right to mourn.
We must never cease to celebrate life and beauty. It is right to dance.
In this space where I feel all the feels in a very Inside Out way, "may we remember that He is present with us, He is good, and He is faithful (She Reads Truth)." Amen and amen.
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