Being Thankful while Others Weep

“Let’s take a selfie!”  We’re at the zoo; we’re at the playground. On Friday, at the airport heading to Legoland and then, onto Anna Maria Island.

Our flight out was delayed, and delayed again. We walked the new wing of the airport, ate when we weren’t hungry, and tried to not think about the fact that we should’ve already been seated in our rental car before ever boarding our flight.

I thought about posting an update on Facebook after this excited one:

I didn’t.

I wanted to, but I didn’t.

Because, well, the world. Being thankful while others weep didn’t feel okay.

I felt guilty about boo-hooing that our flight was delayed. After all, we were flying to Florida. We were on our way to Legoland and to white sand and crystal waters.

I felt guilty but I also knew and know that you guys would have gotten it. Maybe you’d have remembered how much airport waiting sucks, or maybe you’d have remembered having to make the calls that ensure you’ll still have a place to stay, a way to get there, and will arrive with a little boy who maybe enjoys the treat you’ve planned for him for months instead of being a crazed, sleep-deprived whiner after six hours of sleep.

I know you’d have gotten it.

And yet, I didn’t post the sucky status update that followed the bliss of my newly-six-year-old taking his first taxi to his first Florida trip on a grounded airplane once called a ninee…

Being thankful while others weep never feels okay.

My friend Kenya, referring to South Carolina (who could have also been referring to Any of The All of the Very Bad Horrible Things), recently wrote that she was Grasping at Straws:

Mom and Dad are fine, and I did a roll call text to all of my closest friends. But we all know someone who knows someone, who knows someone who lost everything.

So from my sofa where I pretty much remained all last weekend and into Monday, I did not whine out loud again.”

That’s the thing about Facebook and life, isn’t it? The lightest of our own moments are the darkest of another’s, and being thankful while others weep feels wrong.

And so I didn’t post photos on Facebook yesterday from Legoland. I didn’t post the ones from Lizzi’s visit to ‘Murica. I didn’t post ones from the white-sand beaches that we frolicked on today.

And then I thought. Sharing our happy is just as important as sharing our causes, if not more so. Maybe, sometimes, we have to be thankful while others weep. How else do we continue breathing?

I think about this world and the state that it’s in, and I can barely breathe. I think about the world that my little boy grows up in – one with school lock-downs, with boys barely older than he is being trained to kill people in the name of God, with people who make fun of one another rather than joking and dancing and being Superheroes – and I know, with all of me, that if we’re going to have a universal experience, it’s going to start with me, with you, with all of the dreams, and with all of the empathy and wonder.

I think about this world and I know that it’s important to share the happy. Let’s face it. While it’s much easier to join in the anger and the sorrow, there’s something universal about having an afternoon spent meeting friends.

Being Thankful while Others Weep

Magic, at Legoland.

There’s something to Yelping a breakfast place, finding out that it’s at a bar and saying “Hey! Four stars! Let’s go!” And seeing a small sign in a window that says “Hallelujah Brunch!” and reading “Hallelujah! We’re open for brunch!”

And then getting there, being greeted warmly, sitting after others move over for you…

…thinking “wow, these island people are friendly!” after they welcome you personally, and ordering, and then realizing that the sign said “Hallelujah Brunch! All are welcome!”

After overcoming the incredulousness of understanding where I was and over the awkwardness of whispering “I think this is free but for donations and that it’s church in a bar,” realizing that maybe, it was a perfect reminder to a first day of the beach part of our vacation.

That having women waving their hands for Jesus while a beer cooler hummed to their left was fine, and maybe a touch of life lived beautifully. That it could be a reminder of how differences come together over prayer, song, breakfast, and neon Bud Light signs. Because it was the community that mattered. Nobody was even dressed up.

There’s something universal about dancing in the light on bright white sand.

There’s something thankful in each day for each of us. Even on the days when it’s only for a moment.

There’s also something thankful for sharing in one another’s pain, and in the universal pain. In seeing the grief of this that we’re leaving legacy to our children. Of wanting to change our children’s legacy.

In seeing the grief in the world.

Which is why I share today, about today’s joy. Because the only way I see us swimming to the other side of grief and tragedy is to swim in a glorious ocean, even while knowing that it’s taken the lives of loved ones near and far.

There’s something to being thankful while others weep. To finding the joy and the sunshine. Maybe, after all, that helps us to share the darker times with more light.

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This has been a Thankful post. Done at 2am on vaca. Forgive me if it takes me a while to get back to you okay?
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