Feeling Both Grief and Joy

What a crazy development: my 11-year-old twin granddaughters are both taller than I am!  The older of the twins (by about three minutes) is 5'8" now, taller than I've ever been.

I am protecting her privacy; but I'm also protecting
you from seeing my just-woke-up face.  Yikes! 
You're welcome!

The younger twin is 5'6" and change, which is just about the height I was before I began to shrink. I'm at least an inch shorter than I used to be. AAAGGGHHH!  How did this happen?  And by "this," I mean two things: how did these granddaughters get old enough to be taller than I am, and how did I get old enough to shrink?

It's hard to accept that these two sweet girls who made me a grandmother for the first time in 2011 are turning into young women.  Where have the years gone?!  Soon, their American Girl dolls will be discarded and replaced by more grown-up interests.  It's sad, but also just exactly the way it should be.

Being out here with them and their siblings this week has been so special, but our time together has passed very quickly.  Yesterday morning at breakfast, the twins' 9-year-old sister wondered why we just couldn't stay until Christmas.  

Well...that is not an option, dear one.  If we could be two places at once, we surely would! But we have a home and a life to go back to in VA, with people there who also depend on us and like to know we're close, people whom we love as intensely as we do those who live out here in Iowa.  So today we'll be on the road again; but I'm sad that the days have flown by this week, just as the years have flown.  In a perfect world, we could all--every single Pearl on our long and ever-growing string--live near one another and never have to miss each other so much in between visits.  Alas, however, this just cannot be.

One of my favorite Catholic writer/blogger/IG influencers, Elizabeth Foss, recently wrote on IG*: "You can be grateful and sad at the same time.  You can count your blessings and be all too well aware of the cost. You can be hurt and smile anyway.  You can feel both grief and joy.  You can notice the light in the darkness."

Yes, that's exactly it!  Foss hits the nail on the head, as usual.

Later on this morning when we leave, I'll feel lots of grief, I'm sure.  But I'll also feel joy, because I believe that this oldest son of ours, his wife, and his six children are living the life they were meant to live, even though to do so, they have to be far away from us. 

Of course I would love it if this beloved family moved back to VA and lived less than 20 minutes from our front door, as they did for four-plus years before they made their move out to the Midwest almost a year ago.  But with a life as blessed as mine has been, I'm afraid it would be selfish to want too much.  Just knowing that they are all thriving here--living out their homesteading dream, finding a like-minded Catholic homeschooling community and making good friends--is enough. The close relationship we have always enjoyed with these precious grandchildren and their parents has not been affected one iota by their move; the distance between us is only in miles, not in love. 

But it's true, as Foss says, that in this valley of tears we live in before we go to our eternal home, even when there are blessings those often come at a cost.  A mother's heart must bear the pain of many swords--but if she's lucky, small ones, non-lethal ones--over the course of a lifetime. There is rarely joy without a bit of grief mixed in.  So hold your babies tight, young mamas.  The days are long sometimes, but the years are rather shockingly short.

*I'm not on IG anymore (of all the social media sites I gave up, that is the only one I still miss); but did you know that you can jump on there and read a post or two before you get kicked off and asked to sign in?  So I cheat and check up on Elizabeth Foss (and a couple of others) from time to time.