And does it seem like we are all collectively trying to feel light, flirty, and happy...yet know that life is truly often heavy, burdensome, and even our best days are as the Psalmist says: "but trouble and sorrow, for they quickly pass, and we fly away." (Psalm 90:10)
I'm not trying to be a downer; I'm just telling the truth from where I'm seeing it: Love is sweet and fragrant and fun, but it also requires labor, sacrifice, and diligence. I can't look at pink hearts without considering all the purple ones too in the trenches of life. Love and loss, love and longing...seems to always go hand in hand.
After almost 19 years of marriage and loving a husband plus six kiddos...love (the verb) and the celebration of it feels much different than it used to:
Less fluff and more foundation. Less stuff and more substance. Less heartburn, but more heartache.
Life is full of opportunities to love, feel longing or loss, and to love anyway.
I've been thinking on these things as Valentine's Day approaches and GraceLaced Shoppe launched the Be Still Series this week (with a sale!) The series is about fighting chaos and the discouragement of waiting for change, with the steadying truth of God's Word. It's His Word that reminds us that:
He is good when He blesses and takes away. He is not through with us yet and will indeed wipe away every tear and make all things new. We can be still because He is still on the throne, even when everything is not perfectly lovely or loving.
Love and longing can sometimes feel like the same thing: Both make the heart ache and both teach us to trust what we can't always see with our eyes.
So maybe these verses meet you at the intersection of loving and loss, maybe they find you yearning and waiting, and maybe these verses remind you that you must just keep pressing on in love and praise because Christ is love and your life is in Him.
I hope so.
*And if these (or anything else in the shoppe) speaks to you this week, we are having a shoppe-wide sale, so enjoy the discount and free print promo through Wednesday 2/15.
Cheering you on, friends.
Because of grace,
(Family portrait by my friend, Joy Prouty of Wildflowers Photography)