Lately I've been scribbling notes after and during church because people have said so many things that have moved me and made me think. And since church is a time for rekindling my link with Heaven that may or may not have been partially severed through the week dealing with this or that, slowly blurring what's most important, I figured it would be good to keep some notes here some Sundays.
But here it is on Monday morning, and I'm sitting in the dentist waiting room waiting for Elle who is getting a sore tooth checked before we head to the airport to let her make her way back to her little tropical island. And my heart is heavy.
Not just because she is leaving, (although it is certainly heavy with that), but because of some sorrowful news this past weekend. Two families we know have lost a family member way too early.
And things like that just leave me feeling so helpless. My heart opens wide and my throat tightens but I feel powerless. Sometimes it feels like the whole world should stop for a moment of silence.
Often nowadays with so much going on in the world.
But of course it cannot. And it does not.
And we go on with making dinner and propelling children to practice the piano and take the dog for a walk.
So it was fitting that I would come across some Sunday notes today from a lesson a few months back about finding "beauty for ashes." It is in Isaiah 61:3 and it says:
"To appoint unto them that mourn in Zion, to give unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness; that they might be called trees of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that he might be glorified."
Those lines make my eyes well up every time I hear them. Maybe it's because my sister
Saydi brings this thought of beauty for ashes up a lot, and she always makes things even more beautiful. But the thought of The Lord exchanging our ashes, all of them, for beauty speaks to me in so many ways.
If we hand over those ashes that make our hearts heavy...whether they be ashes of sorrow, of pain, of embarrassment or pride, and leave them at His feet, we find that He has already changed them. They are transformed into beauty. That's what the Atonement is all about.
It is interesting to think that sorrow is the tool that can transform us into "trees of righteousness." I envision a tree with strong roots and protective branches. They don't grow that way without troubling winds and sorrows coming their way, forcing their roots to dig deeper, their branches to be unyielding.
In my lesson notes from church I wrote down "sorrow creates holes to be filled with JOY later." Not sure if that was something the teacher said, or a quote from somewhere else, but it made me think.
And although in the depths of sorrow, the word "joy" seems so out of place to even be situated in the same sentence with sorrow, I love the thought of sorrow digging wells to be filled with gold later.
Maybe
much later.
But sorrow makes a home for that joy to be planted and to grow. Because otherwise that joy may just slip by, unnoticed and unappreciated, nowhere to hold it and grasp it tight.
My prayer today is that the wells of sorrow riveting these families will be filled with love. From Above. From neighbors. From me. From my family. And that all that love on those rocky riverbeds of sorrow can become a velvety home for joy and understanding in the future as those dealing with such loss transform into trees of righteousness.
We all have secret sorrows. May we all remember to whom we can bring our ashes that blind our way and require us to heave our hearts forward, stumbling and staggering under the weight. And may we find the beauty that God exchanges them for.