“Look, Mom!”

I was with my boys at their school orientation this past weekend. We had just left one of their classrooms and were on our way to the next, when my son faced me, pointing just beyond me.

I turned to the side and found myself inches from a wall covered in lines and vibrant color.

“Oh cool, honey!”

It wasn’t till I reached where my son was standing a few feet back, that I noticed that the colors and lines were forming a word. It was the word JOY.

As human beings, we love to see the big picture. We have it in our very DNA to make connections. To find meaning.

In fact, it’s not just human to do so — it’s Biblical.

In 2 Corinthians 4, the apostle Paul reminds us, “…our momentary, light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory… ”

What feels all-consuming right now is what he calls momentary. And there’s no bigger context for our “momentary” to fit into than all of eternity.

But sometimes it’s hard to feel the comfort of a coming eternal weight of glory when you currently have a boulder on your chest. Grief and sorrow tend to narrow our vision. Sometimes we can only deal with what’s right in front of our faces.

And you know what? I think that’s okay. Maybe it’s even for the best.

The last thing we want to do is to be so desperate to contextualize our pain that we skip right over feeling it altogether. You can’t bury grief and get rid of it. It waits for you just around the corner.

My therapist says it like this: you have to feel it to heal it.

It’s okay to stand there for a bit, dwarfed by the emotions of it all. It’s okay to see the lines and colors and take it in. Feel it. Give it a name.

Over time you’ll find yourself about ten steps back. Maybe you won’t even notice you were on the move. But the next thing you see when you look up?

It just might be joy.