“Your joy is your sorrow unmasked.”
the above passage by kahlil gibran keeps running through my mind. i’m emotionally fragile these days, sometimes surprising myself with tears – happy and sad tears, but it often takes me a while to really figure out which. as my outward appearance changes, my inner landscape shifts to the point that, at moments, i am almost unrecognizable to myself. children change you from the moment they are conceived. koruna has altered me heart and soul and i can barely believe i get to do this all again with another human being. this may be the last time i carry a child inside of me. i’m trying to savor all of it – the ups and downs – knowing that this is the only time in all my son’s life that i get him to myself.
i decided to go back and read gibran’s passage on children and thought i’d share it:
Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
i’m feeling fragile today.
life IS fragile. health is fragile. today i’m just glad to be here. breathing. crying. loving.
10 comments
The way you embrace your fragility is one of the many dimensions in which you do this “mama” thing with such beauty and grace. For me, my children have always been the greatest source of fragility and vulnerability – and, of course, joy. The sounds of Peace Like a River continue to play in my head – as I know they do in Rooster’s at times when she seeks peace and comfort. I actually found a children’s gospel version of it that can be downloaded to a cell phone as a ringtone but can I figure out how to do it – heck no! Guess I’ll have to come back to Rae Dell for another technology tutorial. Much love.
I share your heart stirrings about the fragility of life. I felt it from the beginning with you and your sisters, and now with these precious grand babies, and with my dear parents. It never goes away and I believe the truth is that we appreciate what we have most when we recognize how fragile it all is. It makes me think of Ian and “Bridegroom Widow.” I am glad you are enjoying these days as God knits your boy together. Just think of all the joy to come.
I love you,
Mom
Oh JL, such sweet words, yours and Gibran’s. You bring tears to my eyes. I love you, sister.
Oh sweetie. I have always been at odds with that Gibran passage. I find it [maybe] theoretically [partially] true, but emotionally false. But aside from that, those LEGGGGGGS! I’m seeing Ultimate in his future! All my love to you, I love how Honey says God is knitting your boy together, now THAT brings tears to these eyes.
peace like a river – she actually won’t LET us sing anything else before she goes to bed. we try and she cries and says “no dat song! peace like a river!”
how remarkable that we are so fragile human beings, yet life and strength and vigor keeps moving on. we have 4 generations living and breathing right now in all their fragility…..
i love you so, ivy. can hardly wait for you….
sometimes, lying awake at night, i picture him and ian together. sometimes they are playing Ultimate…..
“life IS fragile”
Sometimes I get scared. I realize the complete happiness and comfort and security and overwhelming love I have in my life, then something whispers ‘nothing is forever’ and I get scared, should I prepare myself…what will happen if…how will i handle it…will i be able to handle it…wisdom tells us again and again, all you have is this day, stay emotionally focused on this day only, today is the gift, love overwhelmingly this day….now onto Gibran’s message and why I feel as I do, to me it reads like directions on the back of the cake mix box, where is the overwhelming love so deep you can’t breathe, chaste and didactic Gibran makes me even more scared. I hope I haven’t offended anyone, it’s just my particular reading of the passage. Sending love, F.
i hold dear your thoughts and ‘particular readings’ of passages. ’tis true – the passage doesn’t exactly portray the all-consuming, overwhelming, drowning-in-it love i feel for my children and my parents. but it does make me marvel at the fact that each one of us is our own. i can see already that koruna has her own thoughts and feelings, that she’ll have her own dreams and visions. i find it freeing to think that, though she came through my limited self, but she doesn’t have my limits. she will choose her own. i like that i cannot even begin to dream of her possibilities. at the same time i find it all a little scary because it means recognizing that there are countless tiny parts of her that will always be unknown to me. and THAT teaches me to save some love for the unknown – to grow enough love to fill all of her unknown, secret spaces with it.
i will “love overwhelmingly this day”.
thanks, flo.
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