It's the right time

There's a time for every season under heaven.

Ecclesiastes 3:1

The snow falls in grainy powdery magnificence, and we make ice cream.

Amy gets a genetic diagnosis.

I face some ghosts from my past.

A dream withers and dies.

I panic around new people.

And so I am told I have grief and I have to feel it.

I'm improvising, and the ice cream falters for a few minutes,

and the kids are crowded around throwing out ideas.

I balk at this whole grief idea.

I run from grief.

It's how I survived as a nurse.

It's how I've survived as a parent.

It's how I've survived as a cancer patient.

But this seems to be the season. And just like the ice cream, that comes together in sprinkled splediforousness, this season seems to be for grief in a lot of ways. I give grief a little window, a little wiggle room in that deep down dark place I think is my soul. And open my Bible the next day, and it's confirmed. This is the season for it, honey.

In that day the Lord God of hosts

called for weeping and mourning,

for baldness and wearing sackcloth;

and behold, joy and gladness,

killing oxen and slaughtering sheep,

eating flesh and drinking wine.

"Let us eat and drink

for tomorrow we die."

The Lord of hosts has revealed himself in my ears:

"Surely this iniquity will not be atoned for

until you die," says the Lord of hosts.

(Isaiah 22:12-13)

If it's time to grieve, 

and you blow your wad because you're on your way out anyway,

that's not okay.

If He tells you it's time to weep, and you numb your pain at the feast,

that's the wrong decision.

If you try to make snow ice cream in summer, good luck.

If you try to ignore your pain, good luck with that, too.

Does he who plows for sowing plow continually?

does he continually open and harrow his ground?

When he has leveled its surface,

does he not scatter dill, sow cumin...

For he is rightly instructed.

His God teaches him.

(Isaiah 28:23-26 exc.)

And though the Lord give you the bread of adversity and the water of affliction, yet your Teacher will not hide himself anymore, but your eyes shall see your Teacher. And your ears shall hear a word behind you, saying, "This is the way, walk in it," when you turn to the right or when you turn to the left. (Isaiah 30:20-21)

Do you remember the book "Owl at Home" by Arnold Lobel? When Owl makes tear-water tea? I think I am going to try it.

Image credit: http://ollerina.com