Dusk pours amber through the maple's crown, and the day exhales its long, slow breath
This is the hour when the light goes soft as ash, soft as rest

Crickets wake their thrumming chorus, a thousand small bells strung along the air,
Stitching the dark to the fading bough, singing the world a lullaby, a prayer

Nature says goodnight in greens and blues, in treefrog-song and the cooling ground But crickets are the voice that linger long into the dawn
The dusk's last word, the evening's truest sound 

My heart aches from the sorrows of a broken home, the waning health of loved ones and a body soon to be mangled by life-saving surgery. It aches from the life I’ve dreamt of for so long that hasn’t come to fruition and appears to be getting further from reach. My grandparents won’t meet my husband or my children on this side of heaven and my parents may not either. That is a very sobering reality. Yet, I have joy and gratitude alongside the ache. Accompanying it.

I used to think joy was something you arrived at once the pain cleared out. That grief and gladness took turns, never sharing the room. When we look to Scripture, it doesn’t promise us a life free from pain or suffering. It promises us a Christ who sits with us through it.

“Many are saying of me, ‘God will not deliver him.’ But you, LORD, are a shield around me, my glory, the One who lifts my head high. I call out to the LORD, he answers me from his holy mountain. I lie down and sleep; I wake up again, because the LORD sustains me.” Psalm 3:3-5

Paul writes that he is “sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; poor, yet making many rich; having nothing, and yet possessing everything. (2 Cor 6:10) He doesn’t say sorrowful then rejoicing. He holds both in the same breath, the same sentence, the same life. That has become one of the truest verses I know, because it names exactly what I feel most days: two things that seem like they should cancel each other out, standing side by side instead.

Nehemiah told the grieving people of Jerusalem, “The joy of the LORD is your strength,” not their circumstances. Not the absence of loss. (Neh 8:10) The joy of the Lord— a joy that comes from outside the wreckage and steps into it. Someone once told me to look at it like a house with two windows facing opposite directions. Out one window, I see what’s broken: the home that didn’t hold together the way I hoped, the body of someone I love growing frailer by the season. Out the other, I see Christ — steady, present, near. I don’t have to choose a window. I can stand in the room and see both. The ache doesn’t disappear because the joy is there. The joy doesn’t lie because the ache is there. They are both true at once.

Joy doesn’t tell us that things will get better. Some days I don’t know that they will. Optimism says that, but joy speaks from a heart of faith and knowledge that God is good. He will “never leave or forsake us.” (Duet 31:8 & Heb 13:5) I am not alone in the not-knowing.

James says to “count it all joy” when we face trials but that doesn’t mean that we are supposed to feel happy about our trials. We can count it all joy because something is being produced in us that we couldn’t get any other way. We can count it all joy because Christ has triumphed over all and he is making all things new! (Rev 21:5)

So, when I sit with a loved one whose strength is fading, I let myself cry, and I let myself be grateful for the hand I’m holding, in the same hour. When I think of the home that broke, I let myself grieve what should have been, and I let myself thank God for how he has held the pieces since. I’ve stopped waiting for the ache to leave before I let the gratitude in. They can share the room. They already do.

Christ was called a man of sorrows acquainted with grief (Is 53:3) — and yet for the joy set before Him, he endured. (Heb 12:2) If joy and suffering could coexist in Him, they can coexist in me because Christ is in me.

May the grace and peace of our Lord be with you all!

The oak trees breathe in silver mist

Their roots have curled through ages kissed

Ferns unfurl in reverent bow

to praise the King who’s coming now

Beneath the green a doorway grows

where the soft and hidden river flows

I kneel beside the velvet floor

and hear a world I’ve not heard before

Oh what a wonder you have made

in every root and branch and blade

Where fairytale and true grace meet

beneath my bare and wondering feet

The moss hides worlds no eye has found

Your glory runs beneath the ground

I breathe it in, I stand in awe

Creator King you made it all

A door of bark a stair of stone

A mushroom throne where light has grown

The beetles wear their emerald shells

like armor forged in chapel bells

The fireflies are lantern-priests

lighting the way for insect and beast

And every fox that pads the trail

is walking through a holy vale

But you put wonder in the seams

You stitched the wild into our dreams

Every moss-covered cathedral stone

reminds me, Lord, I’m not alone

You left your name in every spore

in every world beneath the floor

Oh what a wonder you have made

in realms uncharted, unafraid

Where ancient trees and small things sing

the glory of their unseen King

The moss hides worlds no eye has found

but you have always known the ground

I breathe it in, I stand in awe

Creator King you made it all

And the forest breathes

And the forest breathes

And I am small