Sowing in tears, reaping in joy

I’m staring at the blinking cursor on the screen.

This should be an easy post to write, shouldn’t it? Shouldn’t the words flow fast and free? Oh the joy and celebration this day represents!

The smell of cupcakes hot from the oven wafts in from the kitchen. Only these cupcakes aren’t for the birthday girl. A good friend suddenly lost one of her good friends about a week ago. A car crossed the median into oncoming traffic, right into a wife, mother, daughter, friend…and in a split second life would never be the same for so many. Tomorrow a bake sale to offer a tangible gift of love and support to the family. And so I bake, wishing there was more to be done.

It’s been mighty quiet round these parts the past few months. Life has carried on in all its hard, beautiful, mundane, and messy ways. And all around it seems like the world is breaking. And with each new headline seems to come a cacophony of words and voices, clamoring to turn each new event into a succinct three to five points perfectly proving whatever agenda is the choice of the day. And I feel like I’m watching Job being surrounded by impassioned, budding theologians and philosophizers and all I want to do is sit in the dirt with him and weep.

And I find myself wordless, afraid if I speak I might end up with Job…”Surely I spoke of things I did not understand, things too wonderful for me to know.” And all of the grief and the pain and the hatred and the division and the fear and the grasping and the injustice and the twisted truth – it all leaves me quickly confessing that I do not understand, that I do not know. I do not see how redemption hides around the corner, I do not see how it will force it’s melody into the mournful strains that play from empty wombs to empty cradles to new graves dug to another explosion of hate.

I see you shaking your head a bit. Katherine, I came here for the hope, for the celebration of the miracle done at 12:32pm one year ago.

But here’s the thing. Those months and hours and minutes walked before 12:32pm, August 9th, 2015? Those days of darkness and longing and waiting, holding your breath for a salvation, a healing, an outpouring of grace – that you know is coming, but perhaps not in this life but the next?

Those waiting days changed me.

I understood to greater depths the groans of this creation for the one who will save. I understood to greater depths the great brevity (though at times it may seem tortuously long) of this life. I understood to greater depths that this world is not my home, and it is not where my hope lies. And I have never longed for the day of redemption more in my life.

Those shifts in my heart and in my soul did not get reversed when we brought home an inexplicably healthy little girl.

It has changed how I see this world, how I see headlines. It has changed how my husband and I make decisions. In some areas it has brought great freedom, and in others great weight.

And I’m beginning to understand Paul’s “sorrowful, yet ever rejoicing” in new and powerful ways.

There is so much sorrow in this world. So much brokenness. And yet there are so many glimpses of the coming redemption – so many opportunities to rejoice. I happen to have a year old redemption glimpse napping peacefully upstairs. And oh how we are rejoicing this week.

As I sat down to design the invitations for our celebration of this little one year old, the Lord drew a certain Psalm to mind. And as I wrestled today with the parading of triumph in the midst of so many sorrowing, He drew it to mind again.

We’ve been given a glimpse, a foreshadowing, a tiny peek at the harvest of joy that can come from a season of sowing in tears. We are blessed with that glimpse on this side of eternity.

But what I heard whispered to me in my conflicted heart this morning was – now, you see the tears. And it’s ok to ache and wrestle in the reality and weight and sheer volume of those tears. But a harvest is coming. Harvest will come. And the bounty of it will far exceed all of those tears. And just as the beauty of this day, this beauty of a boisterous, breathing one year old, is brought out into starker relief by the dark nights of tears and waiting, so too will that harvest be made all that more beautiful by the tears it was sown with.

And so here I stand, sorrowful, yet ever rejoicing. Longing, aching, ever hoping and peering for redemption – and celebrating where it is even now in these dark days breaking through.

And to you, my sweet girl. Mama will never be able to adequately describe the incredible privilege it is to be your mommy. We stand amazed and humbled at the beauty you have brought to our lives in this past year. May this trip down memory lane be a reminder of the bountiful joy of the harvest.

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