May

Typically, May's sort of a funny and bittersweet time of the year for me. I love the warmer weather and budding life all around me. But, my parents' anniversary lands this month. (If they were still married, they would have celebrated 32 years this past weekend.) And, of course, Mother's Day is in May. (Given my mother's illness and absence - both mental and physical - for most of my life, this has classically been a tricky holiday to navigate emotionally).

Enter May 2010. So many great things are happening in and around me. There's all the stuff I've been sharing in my posts and lots of exciting family stuff happening as well. Dreams I've had and prayers I've prayed for years seem to be coming to pass...crazy things that I had begun to lose hope and vision for are seemingly starting to come together ... It's all very exciting.

Yet, in the midst of it...in the midst re-emerging hope, in the midst of re-ignited vision, in the midst of so much proof of God as the Great Orchestrator...I'm firmly aware that I'm still in process and that these dreams and prayers are still in process. I'm firmly aware that I still have unmet longings and desires.

I'm saddened that my parents aren't still married, that we're not able to celebrate what would have been their 32nd anniversary, that I don't have an up-close model of what a good marriage is. I'm disappointed to not have had an available mother or even an idea what it's like to have one. I'm still acutely aware of feeling a bit like an orphan at times. I'm still longing and praying for so many things - for my present family to be whole, for my absent mother to be present, for a family of my own.

Yet, for quite possibly the first time - while I'm feeling those things, while I'm fully conscious of those things - they're not wrecking me or incapacitating me. I know that HE's the point and satisfaction of everything anyway - not the dream of a thriving business; nor of hosting, helping and loving others; nor of a family that's emotionally or spiritually whole. So that's what I'm focusing on.

There's a great quote by C.S. Lewis that sums it up so well: "These things - the beauty, the memory of our own past (or insert your own 'thing') - are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself, they turn into dumb idols breaking the hearts of their worshipers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have not visited."

Hmmmm....