Sometimes God has a way of getting our attention when we least expect it. And sometimes, apparently, He needs to enlist a musician, an artist, a grandmother in heaven, and a heart-shaped leaf to get the job done.
Last night was one of those nights.
Allyson and I had the opportunity to enjoy an evening of beautiful music by a former student, incredible art, and the chance to reconnect with an old friend. I went expecting a lovely evening. I came home with a painting, a heart full of gratitude, and considerably fewer tears in my body than when I arrived. HA! I also came home with a reminder I desperately needed, delivered in a way I never could have anticipated.
One of the pieces of art featured that evening was a painting by Allie Occon titled Best is Yet, inspired by a song of the same name by Emma Nissen. The painting depicts a woman resting her head against her folded arms, illuminated by the warm glow of a small candle. Most of the painting is dark. The light doesn't fill the room or erase the shadows. It simply illuminates enough of the woman's face to reveal a quiet, almost tender expression. It's beautiful on its own, but then I heard Allie's explanation of the piece, and suddenly it became something much more.
Allie spoke about the juxtaposition of grief and hope, sorrow and peace, the yearning for things we cannot have and the acceptance of where life has brought us. She described that strange, complicated space where we've been hurt and have somehow made it to the other side, still wounded, but at peace. She talked about how we can mourn and honor our unmet desires and goals while still living, still hoping, and still looking forward to something better. As I listened, I found myself becoming increasingly emotional because I recognized so much of my own journey in her words.
I turned to Allyson and immediately said, "I must have that."
Because there, staring back at me from that canvas, was something I recognized so intimately that I could hardly believe it. It was my story.
For months, I've been writing, rewriting, editing, and preparing to publish a book called Living in the And: Finding Christ in the Unfinished Places of Our Lives. The entire premise of the book is that life doesn't require us to choose between seemingly contradictory emotions and experiences. We can experience grief AND gratitude. Fear AND faith. Heartache AND hope. We can be wounded AND still be healing. And here was this artist, someone who had never read my book, expressing that same truth through paint and light. I felt seen. Not in the casual sense of someone understanding what I was saying, but in that much deeper, almost sacred sense of someone giving form to something you've struggled to explain.
Allie wrote about the candle in her painting, explaining that she wanted the viewer to feel the warmth that comes from even a little light. She connected that light to Jesus Christ, the Light of the World, and the ways His goodness can appear in our lives through other people, unexpected experiences, and moments of reflection and renewal. As I considered her words, I thought about how often I've wanted God to turn on all the lights. To illuminate the entire path, explain why things happened the way they did, and show me exactly where I'm going and how everything is going to work out. But that's not always how He works, is it? Sometimes He gives us a candle. Just enough light to see that we're not alone, just enough warmth to remind us that there is still goodness in the world, and just enough hope to believe that the story isn't over. Sometimes, if we're paying attention, that little bit of light is enough.
As if the painting and Allie's beautiful words weren't enough, the evening continued with Emma sharing a story about grief, love, and her MorMor. For those unfamiliar with the term, MorMor is a Scandinavian word for maternal grandmother. My siblings and I grew up with a MorMor, too. My mom's mom. So the moment Emma began talking about hers, I felt an immediate connection. As she shared her story, I found myself thinking about my own mom and how much I miss her.
There are days when that missing is quiet, almost like background music playing somewhere in the distance. And there are other days when it catches me completely off guard. A memory, a song, a familiar phrase, or some little thing that reminds me of her, and suddenly the grief is right there again. That's one of the strange things about losing someone you love. Life continues. You laugh, celebrate, have wonderful experiences, and build new memories. And then something reminds you of the person who isn't here to share them, and for a moment you feel the weight of their absence all over again. But you also feel the love, and maybe that's the part we sometimes forget.
Not long ago, I found a little leaf outside my classroom door. It had fallen in such a way that it looked remarkably like a heart. I remember stopping, looking down, and thinking, "Well, that's cute! It's a heart." And then I wondered if maybe it was a little hello from my mom. I picked it up, took a picture, and sent it to my siblings. Was it a sign? Was it just a leaf that happened to look like a heart? I don't know, and I don't really need to know. I just know that for a moment, standing outside my classroom, I thought about my mom and felt a little closer to her.
After hearing Emma's story, I shared the picture with her and told her about our MorMor. I even suggested that perhaps our grandmothers were friends in heaven and that one of them had arranged for that little heart to find its way to me. I rather like that possibility. The thought of two grandmothers conspiring somewhere on the other side of the veil to send a little love our way makes me smile. And frankly, knowing grandmothers, it doesn't seem entirely outside the realm of possibility. HA!
But then Emma said something else that hit me even harder.
She talked about how much heartache there is in the world, how much grief and anger and sadness surround us. But she also talked about the abundance of joy, goodness, beauty, and love that exists alongside all of it. She reminded us that we tend to find what we're looking for, and that the same principle applies whether we're looking for reasons to be joyful or reasons to be angry.
Oh, boy. Because here's something I haven't exactly kept secret lately: I've been angry. I've been hurt, frustrated, and disappointed by people, circumstances, and situations that haven't unfolded the way I hoped they would. I've spent more time than I'd like to admit replaying conversations, revisiting disappointments, and focusing on things I cannot change. And the more I look for reasons to be angry, the more reasons I seem to find. Funny how that works, isn't it?
I've always believed that we tend to find what we focus on. I've taught it, written about it, and encouraged other people to look for the good, recognize their blessings, and choose where they direct their attention. And yet, somewhere along the way, I'd allowed myself to become so focused on the hurt that I was having a harder time seeing everything else. Not because the good wasn't there, but because I wasn't looking for it. There I was, sitting in an audience, listening to someone gently remind me of something I already knew but had apparently forgotten how to practice.
It wasn't a scolding, and it wasn't a suggestion that my anger or grief were somehow unjustified. It wasn't one of those irritating little platitudes about choosing happiness and pretending everything is wonderful. It was simply a reminder that there is more than one thing happening in my life at any given moment. There is heartache AND there is joy. There are disappointments AND there are blessings. There are things I wish had turned out differently AND there are beautiful things happening right in front of me. I can acknowledge that I've been hurt without allowing that hurt to become the only thing I see. I can recognize the unfairness of certain experiences without allowing them to determine how I experience everything that comes afterward.
And suddenly, everything from the evening seemed to come together. Allie's painting, the little candle, Emma's song, the story of MorMor, my mom, the heart-shaped leaf, and the words about grief and hope and finding what we're looking for. It all came in waves, one after another, until something inside me broke open and the floodgates of emotion opened. The tears came, and I didn't particularly care who saw them.
I wasn't crying because I was sad. At least, not entirely. I was crying because I was moved, because I missed my mom, because I recognized myself in that painting, and because I was grateful for the beauty of what I was experiencing. I was crying because I was reminded of God's goodness at a time when I'd been paying far too much attention to everything that hurt. It was grief AND gratitude, sorrow AND joy, recognition AND renewal, all of it happening at once. And perhaps that's why it was so profoundly moving. I wasn't experiencing one emotion replacing another. I was experiencing all of them together, and somehow, in that moment, there was room for every single one.
In just a couple of days, Living in the And will be released into the world. It's a book born out of some of the most difficult experiences of my life, a book about faith, uncertainty, disappointment, hope, and learning to recognize Christ in places where we might not think to look for Him. I've spent months trying to put those ideas into words, and last night, God gave me a painting. Not because I had everything figured out, not because the wounds had all healed or the questions had all been answered, but perhaps because I needed to be reminded that the things I've written about aren't just ideas to share with other people. They're truths I still need to practice living.
And isn't that just the way life works? We learn something, we think we've mastered it, and then life presents us with another opportunity to discover that we're still very much students. Apparently, writing an entire book about something doesn't automatically make you an expert at living it. Who knew?! HA!
I don't think choosing to look for joy means we ignore the pain. I don't think gratitude requires us to pretend we haven't been hurt, and I certainly don't think faith means we have to understand everything that's happened to us. I think it means we make room for something more. We allow the grief to exist without giving it the entire room. We acknowledge the anger without allowing it to become the lens through which we see everything. We honor what we've lost while remaining open to what might still be waiting for us. And maybe, just maybe, we begin to notice the little candles God has placed along the way.
Sometimes those candles come in the form of a beautiful piece of art, a song that reaches somewhere deep inside us, an old friend, or an evening with someone we love. Sometimes they appear in the memory of a grandmother or a little leaf shaped like a heart. None of those things erases the difficulties of life, and none of them magically resolves the questions or disappointments we're carrying. But they remind us that the difficulties aren't the whole story. There is still goodness, still beauty, still love, and still a God who hasn't stopped working in our lives simply because we haven't figured everything out.
Last night, my cup ran over. I was overwhelmed by beauty, music, connection, memory, and the extraordinary gift of being reminded that there is still so much goodness to be found. I'm grateful to Allie for creating something so deeply personal and profoundly moving. I'm grateful to Emma for sharing her music, her story, and a reminder I needed more than she could possibly have known. And I'm grateful for a God who continues to find ways to reach me, even when I've been so busy staring at the things that hurt that I haven't always noticed the light.
I don't know what the future holds. I don't know how every disappointment will resolve itself, or whether some of the things I've lost will ever be restored. But I do know that there is a lot of heartache in this world AND there is an abundance of joy. Both are real. Both deserve to be acknowledged. And while I may not always get to choose what happens to me, I do have some say in what I choose to look for as I move forward.
So I'm going to keep my eyes open for the hearts, for the little candles, and for the unexpected reminders that God is still there, still loving us, and still working in the unfinished places of our lives. I'm going to try to spend a little less time searching for reasons to be angry and a little more time noticing the reasons I have to be grateful. Not because the anger has disappeared or the hurt has suddenly healed, but because I don't want to miss the beauty that's still happening while I'm waiting for everything else to make sense.
Because the best may very well be yet to come.
And in the meantime, if I can't find a heart, I suppose I can always make one out of a few triangles.
