living free.

So. We sold our house. I feel ok about it. It’s just a house. A home is wherever love lives. But when I get a glimpse of my favorite Catalpa against my favorite kind of sunset, I feel a fresh wave of grief at saying goodbye. Isn’t it weird that with all the heartbreak in our lives, sometimes it’s the little things that threaten to drown us in sadness? 

I know that the sun will set all the same at a new home, that I’ll befriend an Oak or Spruce there, like the weirdo I am. But this sight has been such a part of my thanksgiving at the end of long, tender, brutal days; looking out at this view always caused me to stop and thank God that I was alive to see it. Yes, home is wherever love lives, but gratitude is where peace lives.

And gratitude can be hard. Really hard. It’s hard in the best of times. And to be honest, these are not the best of times. At one point, I would have called what we’re living the “worst thing that could happen”.

But there’s freedom in living that reality. You suddenly see that the worst thing won’t actually destroy you. That the things you were grateful for are still there to be appreciated. Friends. Healthy kids. Sunsets. The smell of hot coffee. It’s still ok to be grateful for those things in the midst of pain. It’s ok to love the hell out of people when they refuse to love you. It’s ok to be filled with joy at the beauty in life, even as the walls are crumbling around you. Pain and joy are not mutually exclusive. They don’t cancel out. Gratitude isn’t a privilege of the joyful and sorrow isn’t the sole domain of the downcast. It’s in this messy jumble that I see God working. He’s trained my heart towards gratitude and that allows me to trust. But I can trust and still weep for this silly tree and all the love that had taken root in my heart here. 

Henri Nouwen wrote, “Joy does not simply happen to us. We have to choose joy and keep choosing it every day. It is a choice based on the knowledge that we belong to God and have found in God our refuge and our safety and that nothing, not even death, can take God away from us.”

To anyone struggling to live joyfully in the midst of grief, I’ll say this: Keep choosing joy. The things you delight in may some day cause you pain and make you weep. But delight in them anyway. Be grateful for those things and be grateful again when they break your heart. Live with your arms flung wide enough to gather in the joy, sadness, fear, and gratitude. That, friends, is living free.