We went away over Easter- to our little slice of heaven. Where honestly I can feel Creation breathe.
I walk along the beach in the golden light of early morning and feel Creation inhale....then as the clouds turn every shade of orange over the water as the sun sets I feel the exhale. The sun filled air is clear and every single star blazes in glory at night. I look up to the Southern Cross and feel so immensely grateful. Sometimes I am not even sure what I am grateful for, I just am.
And this time away I realised I knew something deep down..
Good can come out of the most atrocious situations.
We think of a circumstance with cruelty, tragedy and despair as a full stop. But as there was a story before the circumstance with good, bad, ugly and beautiful... so there will be afterwards. The story will be altered beyond recognition of course. But there can be good woven into it.
Joy, laughter, peace and contentment- things that seem impossible to ever be again in the midst of pain and suffering- can be ours again.
Allowing grief to unfold, without hurry, expectation or judgement, in turn allows the after to come. And without fanfare, there it is, a goodness rising from the ashes.
And one day, however unlikely it may seem in the middle of the circumstance, it may be possible to say- life is good. This or that, is good, and it would not have found me without the before.
I realised that good had arrived. I have a pure and beautiful relationship with both my sisters that has risen from the ashes of what happened to our family. A good and new relationship that I treasure. And it could not have come without what happened before. And so, I was grateful in one small measure for what happened. Not all of it and maybe never will be. But good came, and for that I am grateful.
