Life is brutiful

Oh the truth. One minute life is rolling along just fine, then the next you find yourself caught squarely in the crosshairs of grief and anxiety. Yesterday I shared a farewell dinner with some precious friends, friends whom I will miss terribly but whose next adventure I wholeheartedly support. I ate dinner with good friends while also knowing that another precious friend sat anxiously in an ER waiting room longing to hear word about her sweet dad who had fallen from a significant height. Brutiful.

Tomorrow would have been my dad’s 86th birthday. We were all together last year this time celebrating him, not knowing that we would lose him only 2 short months from that day. The celebration, the family time, honoring my dad – it was all beautiful and full of grace. Losing him so soon after… brutal.

This coming Monday would have been my parents’ 55th wedding anniversary – “would have been” being the key phrase. I can’t express the depth of my gratitude for the commitment they showed one another and my brothers and me. And, I am heartbroken that they will celebrate here together no more.

Seriously. Life is brutiful. The brutal is somehow tangled up in the beautiful, and just when we think we can’t take any more pain something or someone happens to shine light on the beauty that still exists, that seeps up through the difficult just long enough to offer a little hope, a little space for gratitude.

I can’t explain it. I can’t quantify it or even fully define it, but I think Glennon summed it up so nicely in that one word: brutiful.

So, I try to remember, when grief and anxiety loom near that somewhere in it all – some time – the beautiful will eventually peek through. Maybe not today or even tomorrow or next week, but I’ll recognize it eventually. And, it’ll keep me moving forward another day, with a little bit of hope and some space for gratitude. Thanks be to God.