Contrary Moods
Moods are fickle. The maddest and saddest I have ever been happened on a warm September afternoon and a spring morning.
But in turn, one of my happiest moments was standing in a parking lot wavy with heat and kissing my son on the side of his neck which was covered in sand. The asphalt was sticky under my shoes. There were still miles and miles to go before sleep. And a mosquito had just bitten the softest, most tender part of my upper arm. And still…I was inexplicably happy.
I think God gives us emotions that contradict the situation we are in to remind us that we are not creatures tied to this timeline. Our hearts are beating for something deeper in the earth and also too high to see. Who knows what pulls our emotions from one chord to the next, but whatever our souls are listening to, it is beyond this landscape.
It makes me think of this poem by C.S. Lewis (who first and foremost wanted to be a poet long before he considered himself a theologian):
THE DAY WITH A WHITE MARK
All day I have been tossed and whirled in a preposterous happiness:
Was it elf in the blood? Or a bird in the brain? Or even part
Of the cloudy crested, fifty-league-long, loud uplifted wave
Of a journeying angel’s transit roaring over and over through my heart?
My garden’s spoiled, my holidays are cancelled, the omens harden;
The plann’d and unplann’d miseries deepend; the knots draw tight.
Reason kept telling me all day my mood was out of season.
It was, too. In the dark ahead the breakers are only white.
Yet I—I could have kissed the very scullery taps. The color of
My day was like a peacock’s chest. In at each sense there stole
Ripplings and dewy sprinkles of delight that with them drew
Fine threads of memory through the vibrant thickness of the soul.
May the color of your mood be that of a peacock’s chest. And when it’s not, may you remember that it once was and will be again.
Sunday Thoughts Link Up
It’s time for another Sunday Thoughts Link-Up! It’s also time for a little announcement…
I’ll be taking a break from the Sunday Thoughts for a while, because in case you missed my announcement this week, I have a middle grade novel coming out next year and I am in the thick of edits. I will make sure you all know when the link up kicks back in again! Thank you for your patience and all the positivity you bring every week to this place.
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A big thank you from Jamie on The Mom Gene!
