Happiness

I think I'm mostly a happy person. I laugh easily, I'm pleased with small things such as the flowers that V almost buys me on our anniversary. (They last so much longer than real roses). But today I was surfing around the web and saw so many black and white banners for the day of blog silence for Virginia Tech on the 30th April.

My day of sorrowful remembrance also falls in April on the 28th. I remember the first baby, miscarried at 13 weeks on that day. I also remember that it is the wedding anniversary of good friends of ours whose marriage I thought would be as strong as mine own was destroyed through conflict and eventual adultery. This time last year they were fighting for their marriage, now they have surrendered and are heading, inexorably it seems, for divorce.

And today another friend has terrified their spouse by leaving home unexpectedly with no word of where they have gone. I do not fear for them, although they are in great sorrow for a departed loved one, for I know that God has this covered, but I am concerned. Have you ever tugged on a spider's web? There is real resistance there but inevitably it tears. We are so strong sometimes but at other times we can be such fragile creatures.

Is there a fierceness of joy in our lifetime to balance the massive tragedies, or a softer happiness that will cushion us when we experience the desperate, gnawing sorrows of loss?

I have no TV and rarely read a newspaper so Virginia has been removed, or rather I have been removed from it all. But I remember Hungerford, Dunblane, 7/7 and Aberfan is a racial memory for the Welsh.

If you are reading this, send a prayer for those in sorrow. It's a daily thing.