Why did a 25 year old mother of 5 have to lose the love of her life so soon? What possible good can ever come of that? and How can we call a world where 50 people are slaughtered in the name of what someone believes in good? and Can life really be beautiful when it's filled to the brim with tragedies, like that sweet little babe being killed by an alligator right in front of his parents?
I wrestle with these questions. I wrestle with wondering how the world I fall in love with on a daily basis-the one that offers sunshine and pool days, the one with the sweetest friendships and family, the one with pumpkin spice lattes and giant dreams-can be the same world that offers up such terror. I wrestle with wondering how God could let these awful things happen.
I wrestle with trying to understand how tonight, I'll get to eat dinner with my best friend and my littlest love. I'll fall asleep in a house, so thankful for how full my life is. All the while knowing that my sweet little babe will grow up in a world that seems to have more than its fair share of ugly.
I know there's a time for mourning. We honor those who have been ravaged by tragedy-by cancer and terror and just sheer chance-with a time of sadness. But sometimes life feels so hard and so heavy that it seems that no period of mourning can ever be long enough to do it justice. And when you only get one life-one short, terrible, beautiful life-how do you make sense of that?
The answer to all of my questions is both incredible simple and incredibly frustrating: I just don't know. And perhaps even more frustrating and final-I will never, ever know.
I know that sometimes life is hard. And sometimes life is beautiful. And we have to grab a hold of the beautiful moments.
We live in a world where we get both summertime and heartbreak, campfires and terror, sunflowers and gut-wrenching sorrow. It is beautiful. It is terrible.
I'm thankful for the beautiful moments and perplexed by the terrible ones, and while it leaves me in confusion, it also leaves me knowing what I want to fight for.
It leaves me knowing that I have to fight hard for thankfulness. That I have to fight hard for love.
Life can be awful, the past few weeks have shown us that. The world can be ugly. So I want to fight for the beautiful moments.
For the ones filled with laughter. The ones where you go to sleep that night completely exhausted from a day just so full of life. The days spent in the sunshine, the nights spent by a fire, the mundane things like a trip to the grocery, made special because of who you're with.
I want to fight for the magical moments, the ones you couldn't possibly make yourself, but are made by spending time with the people you love the most.
Because in the end, all we really have is each other and our memories, you know?
