My Heart

I know it's Thanksgiving weekend and we are all focusing (or trying to focus) on what we are thankful for.  Social media is full of posts and tweets with daily thankful thoughts and reminders to give thanks.  I realize the importance of focusing on what we have in our lives that makes us thankful.  I understand why we should back away from the stress and the noise and remember the good.  I love Thanksgiving and giving thanks and I am so, so grateful for countless people and good things in my life.

Lots of good has happened in the past year or so.  In my circle of family and friends there have been babies and promotions and successes and new homes and new jobs and... good.  So much good.  And my heart is thrilled thinking of all of it.  Sometimes life is amazingly wonderful and I love that there are people in my life that much amazingness has happened to and that even in a small way I have been able to share their joy. 

Yet, in the midst of all the thanks and happy and good, part of my heart is very heavy.  In my circle of family and friends there has also been loss and pain and heartache.  So much heartache.  Some have experienced hideous, catastrophic loss that takes my breath away when I think of it.  Others have endured one shitty thing after another piling up, to the point that they wonder if things will ever turn around.  Sometimes life is horrifically awful and I hate that there is nothing I can do to ease their heartache.  I hate that all I can do is keep a place in my heart where their pain is neither forgotten nor trivialized.

So, while I anticipate this holiday weekend with joy and and thankfulness in my heart, these are tempered with lament for the anguish of others. My heart will give thanks and celebrate the good and my heart will hurt for my friends and family whose thankfulness is eclipsed by pain.  My heart will be filled with thanksgiving, but also with hopes of peace and comfort for those enduring heartache and with prayers for them for better days ahead.