Life can be so big. So much. A lesson in counterbalance.

Have you experienced it, too? The beautiful and the brutal all at once?

It’s hard to hold onto these great big feelings, hard to keep it together under such stark contrast. 

In one moment today, a dear friend’s baby is baptized - officially welcomed into God’s blessed family. A peach-fuzz head and gorgeous round cheeks, clothed in white and the promise of all that is to come in a life just beginning.

Smiles and love all around.

In that same moment, another friend will soon be blessed for the final time as she trudges toward the finish-line of life in its all-too-fleeting finality.

Tears and love all around.

Families gather, one to anticipate what’s to come, the other dreading it. A counterbalance of brutal and beautiful.

Being a witness to both is to live in the totality of what life is, a journey of extremes… and everything in between.

Today, as I hold these sweet families in heart and prayer,  joy sidles up alongside grief. And in that, I suppose I hold life itself. Perhaps that’s why this is so weighty. So much. Perhaps this is why we need one another to carry it with us. So we gather. Together.

Today, friends, wherever you are, live fully into whatever your moment is.

Celebrating.
Grieving.
Beginning.
Ending.
Loving.
Walking with one another through it all. 

This, dear ones, is life, sweet and brutal. Wherever you are in it, know that we are in it together - even through time and space, we are joined in heart and spirit and prayer.

Leave your intention and I’ll lift it high. I’ll carry a bit of it for you. And today, especially, I hope you’ll do the same for these I love, lifting them in the midst of life’s extremes.

(My mission is to reach hearts, always. Please like, comment and share with someone who could use this.)