Bittersweet Blessings

This weekend was so simultaneously happy and sad. We celebrated the twelfth year in the life of our beautiful Destiny (and yes, she is our destiny)…and in the same weekend we gathered around our mama, doing our best to support her broken spirit, as she observed the first anniversary of her own mama’s passing.

So many emotions in just the span of a weekend, the flexibility of my heart being tested as it so rapidly swayed from one extreme to the other…but I suppose that happiness is sweeter once you have tasted sadness, and life’s most important details are far more recognizable once you have the bittersweet experience of witnessing a loved one’s final breath.

Even in the saddest moments of the last three days, I found myself feeling just as blessed as I felt during the highpoint of the same days’ laughter. Just as my soul drank the fulfillment of another year to celebrate my daughter being alive, I felt an equal amount of God’s grace celebrating the memories of my Grandmother’s life. That is an awesome thing indeed!

I thank You, Father, for so many things. Just to have been given the clarity to recognize the miracle of the entire journey is a huge gift in itself. But to see life captured in its small, still moments is the sweetest of perspectives. These are some of the photographs my mind took (and stored in my forever memory bank) this weekend:

* Remembering the way I used to reach my right hand back to the car-seat behind me, as I drove with my left, in order to hold the tiny hand of my daughter…WHILE actually holding her (bigger than mine now) hand as she sat next to me in the passenger seat, on our way to her birthday lunch date.

* Witnessing, first hand, how well-liked Destiny is as girl, after girl, after girl appeared at the front door, ready to help her celebrate her birthday…and then realizing that she is well-liked because she is a genuinely good person, as she stopped the festivities several times just to hug me and make sure I knew how much she appreciated her party.

* The pure and raw empowermentI felt on the way to my mom’s on Sunday. I looked in my rear-view mirror to see my sister, Debra, in the car behind me and then I immediately looked ahead of me to see the beginning of this convoy – Nickie, then April, then Darla, in that order and each in their own cars, all of us heading to the same destination with a common purpose – to offer the same comfort to our mother that she has, no doubt, given to each of us on several occasions.

I am truly honored, humbled, and thankful today. I just wanted to share that with everyone and encourage each of you to also focus on not just the big picture – but on all the tiny moments that make the whole thing possible. Life, huh? What a blessing.