A Gentle Page Turn

While sitting at my kitchen table, a gentle breeze lifted and turned the page on my day timer, sitting open close by. I turned it back again, and then realized that the turn, the lifting of one paper thin page, was what I have been longing for. How is it that an unseen hand can move with invisible sweetness, and go unnoticed so often?

The month of May is a promise kept and a promise broken for me. God gave me the best gift of my life in the month of May twenty-five years ago, my son Matthew. God also placed my fathers death in this month, and my marriage too ... on May 9th, 2017, on what should have been a 25th wedding anniversary, I heard the words "I don't think our marriage has a future". Death and delivery ... they seem to go hand in invisible hand. 

Sometimes I think I am over it all, healed and somewhat heart hardened, just like a good little soldier. Carry on, Christian soldier, forgive, move on, look up and not back. Most of the time my joy of the Lord supersedes my sorrow, but not so in the month of May. While the trees are dressed in summer leaves, and flowers smile at the sun, I celebrate them and sometimes cry at the same time. They are so pretty, so happy ... I want to love like they do.

If I accept the page turning, it still feels like waiting. We are in a time of wait and see, aren't we, dear reader? Life goes on and yet, we are holding our breath collectively, with the uncertainty of the future. The invisible hand is ever present, I can see it as it ruffles the tree tops, making them dance to and fro : making them move. 

We are meant to move. The month of May is bitter sweet to me. While nature seems to speed up, filling in and filling out, with fluffy feathery goslings and full branches, I am slowing down to appreciate it. The bloom of youth is tender, and fades as the summer heat ages the green to yellow to dried up blow away brown. Death and delivery, death and delivery ... 

My hope is in the LORD, the One that I died for, the One I gave up my marriage for, the One that hath delivered me from my own wretchedness. I put nails in my own marriage coffin, in more ways than one. We all contribute to our own demise, isn't that right, dear one? 

I want to be moved by the invisible hand, guided, led, page turned. I want my ways to be His, and I know, He was a man of sorrows ... dear reader, the calendar page just turned again as I typed these words. He told us that there would be tribulation, but He also instructed us to be of good cheer, because He overcame the world:

These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation; but be of good cheer: I have overcome the world (John 16:33)

Bitter sweet 💖