We were late for school this morning. A text from my sister stopped me in my tracks and I doubled back, stared at my phone and felt the ache in my heart that feels all too common these days. Heartache. We had prayed for a miracle for the boy in the hospital. We had prayed for his full healing. But miracles don’t always happen. And not every chapter ends with pretty sentences.

There was already a funeral penciled In our family calendar this week. Now there would be 2 squares filled with the words “funeral”.

And the news of an NBA legend dying, and a plane full of military hero’s crashing to the ground. Everything feels heavy. I try and envision the leftovers. The parentless kids, the gutted mothers left childless, the siblings devastated that sisters and brothers don’t come home. The last moments between a parent and child.

The reality of getting back to the safety of our beds an act of war and prayers.

We stood at work, a few of us trying to wrap our heads around the world events. A good healthy discussion to be able to park our emotions somewhere. The words uttered that life is so fragile. Indeed.

I left work early to meet my mom and give my parents time to prep bedrooms at their house for my aunt who has to bury her mother tomorrow.

I stopped by the garden section of a store and ran my fingers down the empty spines and branches of all the quiet trees longing for spring. Their buds tightly furled, afraid to unclasp their treasures for fear of the cold. I pulled a Blue Chinese Wisteria from its place and held it in my hands. I knew where I would plant her in the garden. I knew that when I looked at her far into the years to come when her vines curled through a fence that isn’t even up yet, I would remember today.

I stood in the yard and soaked up the conversation with my mama before she left, the way she held the garlic stalks in the yard and we marveled over the tiny seeds. I savored the quiet time with my dad while the girls played and him and I talked about life and hurts and things to come. I took a bouquet of daffodils to the neighbors with a new baby and clipped mandarins off the trees with them in the dark with a sliver of the moon in the sky. I walked the acreage with the girls jumping in mud puddles and freckled with dirt and counted the snails that Evelyn collected and took note of the song Amelia was singing when Lances car pulled in the long driveway and I swung the gate open for him, “I will send out an army to find you in the middle of the hardest night it’s true, I will rescue you.”

The four of us walked back up to the house in the dark. We ate dinner together at the table that Lance built. We said grace. The girls giggled through bath time and I kissed soapy heads and breathed in my sweet babies and thanked God for another day.

As we head into the long night, the sleepless hours of my friends that are quietly crying their losses into the dark. The ones screaming in silence. The ones questioning their faith, asking God, why.

“You are not hidden, there’s never been a moment you’ve been forgotten… I hear you whisper underneath your breath. I hear you whisper you have nothing left. I hear your SOS your SOS. I will send out an army to find you in the middle of the darkest night it’s true, I will rescue you…”

I’m sorry we didn’t get the miracles we asked for. I hurt for the strangers I’ve never met, but I will pray as if I’ve known them all my life. Isn’t that the thing about life, the cruelty and unfair things come just as often as the wondrous and the ordinary, so we have to be ever so careful with the words we speak, and the lives we touch and the gardens we tend. Spring is just on the other side of the frozen ground.

The lunches are packed, the clothes are laid out and the baths have been given, bedtime stories read and babies tucked in. The house is put back together. Everyone is sleeping and I’m still trying to wrap my head around a whirlwind of a week.

There was a lot of quiet chaos and work hustle, there was a lot of world devastation; fires burning, planes falling from the sky, arguments over world events and just a little before all this started, there was the destruction of Rabbis destroyed at Hanukkah parties and people shot while they had heads bowed during prayer at a little church in Texas. It’s all enough to take your breath away. It makes you wonder how people get up and keep going day after day. Life is hard.

There were some moments behind closed doors in my office where there were hard conversations across the table, movement and change and unknowns.

There were two little girls at two separate dentist appointments sobbing and scared and me perched in a suit and heels at the end of their reclined chairs, leaned forward holding their hands and praying over them. I texted Lance and told him that I hated doing the dentist appointments and that the next round of them were all him. And 4 minutes later he was standing in the room with me, holding Amelia’s hand while tears rolled down her little cheeks. I’d never been so thankful that he’d been passing by on his way home and just showed up.

There have been many faces that crossed the threshold of my office door and quietly closed it behind them and cried, or yelled or just sat there stunned. There’s so much life going on. So many hurts, or memories of missing people gone to soon, that there is a whole world of raw, gutted people just trying to do their best.

By 2pm today I glanced at my uneaten salad at the edge of my desk and messaged a friend grappling their own predicament, that I was headed to grab a coffee and did they want anything, or did they want to come. Four minutes later they were sitting in my car, trying to figure out the best plan for being the better person in a tough situation that had been unraveling for weeks. When we parted ways in the hallway, coffees in hand, fresh perspectives I said to them, “rise up”. It’s all we can do.

I sat at my desk finished up some paperwork, stared at the bouquet of daffodils and paper whites I’d gathered up Yesterday to remember my sweet aunt Polly with and looked at the message on my phone from Lance. “Hurry home, I have hot wonton soup for you.”

The house was messy and loud when I got home, and the girls had colored me pictures and made a fruit tray. I took them outside for a moon date. The full moon lit up the pasture and the pond, the girls and I played tag under the stars and chased each other until we were breathless from running and laughing and our cheeks were red from the cold. Jack was thrilled to run with us.

When it feels bleak, or lonely, or when it hurts too much. Find someone who reminds you that you don’t have to do it alone. When you are weary it’s ok to rest. And when it’s your time to rise up, rise to the occasion to do better, if only it’s to try again tomorrow. And if you can show up for someone else. Show up.

Take yourself on a moon date when you get the chance, stand there in the quiet and look up at the big wide black canvass and the silver stars and remember that your aren’t alone.