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Have you experienced changing seasons of life, when it seems like everything is thrown off course? When you've had to shift and pivot so many times your head is spinning and your emotions are reeling?
The past several weeks have been a whirlwind of activity, both expected and unexpected. As many of you know, at the end of September, Hurricane Helene devastated many of our Western North Carolina communities.
And our communities rose to the call to support each other. From meals and showers to water, food and supplies. From mucking out mud, bulldozing roads and rebuilding bridges, to holding hands, loving smiles, praying and finding ways to keep hope alive. God has been at work in mighty ways. It is not lost on me that the process of healing and rebuilding will continue for years.
But healing is helped along when we can find hope and joy in the midst of the sorrow and grief.
My absence from social media and blogging the past several weeks was in part not only to the lack of ability to communicate after the storm, but also because we were in the process of helping our daughter and her now husband plan their wedding. We had hoped to utilize our planned vacation to nail down many of the final details, but of course that didn't happen. Communication was knocked out and the community crisis response was much more important than trying to figure out if it was even possible to get to the beach.
In the aftermath of the storm, we thought about postponing the wedding. It soon became evident though that a celebration might be just what we and many of our family and friends needed in this time of grief and sorrow. Something to provide a sense of normalcy in a world that felt upside down. Head over to a post I wrote on Inspire a Fire to find out more about finding healing and growth as we process our emotions during these challenging and changing seasons of life. We can experience both grief and joy at the same time.
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