The gentle glow of a candle graces my kitchen table. All clutter is cleared from my view. In the background is my beautiful sunflower gift from my friend Kim. Red wine flickers with a hint of purple, just a little in a stemmed glass. A single cheese biscuit awaits my nibbling, resting upon a sunflower saucer.

Today I’ve moved like honey–sweet, gentle, and slow. Restorative properties come from such a rhythm.

It’s a pouring into myself, really, a healing from an intensive 9 days of pouring out to others.

Sometime deep joy feels almost like grief. Passages are right and good. Perhaps tears lubricate transition, easing the forward movement. The exhaustion of this day, spawned by ignoring my own physical boundaries in the need to serve, helps me embrace this day of sipping from the cup of change.

The place I am in this tiny space of time is also a culmination of spiritual outpouring. A repetition of days and sleepless nights pouring a mother’s heart before God, asking for outpourings of HIS heart for my children. That they would know Love. His Love. That they would be shaped by this, not anything else, certainly not despair.

The days of children slip through my fingers like sand in an hourglass. I see how little is left before the top half is completely emptied. Maybe when there is only see-through glass, maybe then I will be willing to turn it upside down and discover a new life, but not now. Not yet.

I don’t try to hang on. It would do no good. It would harm. So my fingers are open. The goal is to experience the sensations of letting go. To rejoice in the passage. To cry when I need to. No going numb. No clinging to the past.

But the sand’s pace is furious. And my heart finds it difficult to learn that hurried rhythm.

What’s funny about today’s tears is I”m not sad even though I grieve.

There’s actually new hope, new joy. Motherhood’s joy has extra validation today. The prayers cast like bread upon water have washed back to me, swollen with possibilities and wide, grand, newness.

I’m an old romantic. Time may prove me naive and mistaken in my musing of these saturated bread crumb dreams. Still this moment. For this fleeting sand of time, I feel dreams launched. Decades of prayer fulfilled. The tears fall, in part, because the dreams are worthy. the whispers of their fulfillment worthy, the life in process worthy.

After a week walking my friend through the valley of the shadow I sensed myself cloistered and safe. I experienced abundance, blessing, doors wide open. Amazed and breathless I felt HIS whispers of approval. Of Love.

My thoughts flow in a stream of bubbling gratitude, then meander in the awareness of the True Faith and how His faithfulness flows for me.

Humbled by joy so deep I cry like one who mourns.

Who will ever understand a mother’s heart?

Only the One who gave it to her.

Tagged: empty nest, grief joy, journaling, mothering, passages, sand of time, time