Hard Things

It is the first day of school for my 2 oldest daughters and that day is ALWAYS hard for me. You would think after years of this (my oldest is in 5th grade), it would get easier, but it never is. They are a little nervous, a little excited, I am sad to send them off and my house feels emptier and lonely, despite the 2 crazies fighting over toys and pulling hair (oh Thing 4 is a hair puller these days-argh!! so maddening!!) I still have running around here with me. That coupled with the change of seasons dangling in the humid aging August air makes me feel squeezed in my heart. Add to that a little (ok a lot) extra squeezing when I think of all the children I left behind in Africa who are getting ready for school for the first time without a mom to pack their backpacks and pick out their "first day outfit" and make sure they get to class ok, and sometimes I feel so gripped by the hard stuff that it literally feels hard to breathe and is physically exhausting. I am definitely a "feeler"-I feel things deeply and they profoundly affect my days and moods, many times more than they ought. But, alas, it is the way I roll and so I spend a fair amount of time battling back feelings that can threaten to overwhelm at times. The first day of school always makes me think about how fast time is flying and how I am powerless to stop it. It makes me realize that TRULY, I "do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes" just as God states in James 4:14. I cannot grasp and cling to a handful of morning mist any more than I can keep my children close to me forever, but I want to, and sometimes I try. And fail. But I have found, that like the mist in the mountains behind my house, if I learn to appreciate the beauty of the mornings, where the mist partially covers the green rolling peaks and hides their full splendor, I can realize that when it is gone, while I remember it's beauty fondly, I get to see the full majesty of the mountains revealed.

(photo taken from my deck this past spring)

That is how it will be with us. I know my children are but a vapor just as I am and I cannot stop time, and I know my time in Africa this summer was all too short and I pray that the Lord will allow me to return sooner rather than later-things in this life are so fleeting, yet when they are gone, the full majesty of our Lord will be fully revealed. When I think of it like that, it makes the hard things a little more bearable, for God's grace IS sufficient and thankfully His mercies are new every morning (Lamentations 3:22-23)!