The Northern Lights

Tonight was a hard night. Truthfully, it's been a hard few weeks, or more honestly, a hard few months. 
The past few weeks in particular, I've been getting almost no sleep at night. Apart from the normal routine of work and kids' activities, I've had some unusually long days. I spend my nights stressing about the classroom, my own children, my various relationships, and the general disrepair that seems to pervade my house (laundry and dust bunnies, anyone?) and my peace. Every night I'm ready to pass out from exhaustion, yet my mind and heart are racing so hard I can't fall asleep. I feel like I'm stretched to the breaking point but failing to keep up with even the simplest day to day tasks, and the guilt and overwhelm prod at me the second I close my eyes. 

Usually, saying the rosary helps me sleep, but lately I finish it and lie there wide-eyed and anxious. I'm burnt out to almost nothing and every morning is a fight with myself to get out of bed. This never-ending winter is weighing on me like everyone else, compounded by behaviors from kids (my own and other people's) that I'm just not sure I have the energy to manage anymore. It turns out that the cup of my patience has run dry, but the cup of my stress over-floweth. 

As I was scrolling mindlessly through Facebook, trying to keep my busy brain occupied, I noticed people posting these beautiful pictures of the Northern Lights. So, I tucked my blanket around me and wandered outside, then up the street. I almost certainly looked a little unhinged out there in the street in my pajamas, walking up the hill, eyes lifted, looking for something in the sky. I walked to the top of the hill in this semi sleep-deprived state, but I couldn't see anything. There was too much light pollution in my neighborhood, or maybe too many clouds in my sky, to allow me to see anything but mud-grey winter air.

It gives me pause. I know there is something breathtaking out there. Other people can see it and marvel at it. But for whatever reason, tonight (and for many nights now), I can't see it. Maybe the pollution of impatience and ingratitude is blocking it out. Maybe stress and sadness and this feeling of powerlessness that's been dominating my heart is clouding the space between my eyes and what I desperately wish to see. 

Maybe there isn't a happy little lesson about gratitude in every moment of our lives. Maybe some moments just feel hopeless. Maybe some nights (or weeks or months) just can't be salvaged with gratitude or an attitude change. Maybe sometimes we just need to sit in those silent, sad moments and know that there's a beautiful thing just outside our vision and tonight is not our night to see it. We know it's there and we can feel the frustration of knowing but not being able to be a part of it. We get to feel the anticipation without ever experiencing the reveal, wishing for more but hearing, "not today". We get to honor the feeling of disappointment in ourselves, in our situations, and in our unmet expectations.

The easy, lovely panorama of color that lifts the hearts of others flits beyond my line of sight, sending great arcs of light through the world - but not through mine.

It hurts. But it has to be okay, doesn't it, to sometimes grieve what we are missing? To allow ourselves the sorrow of darkness until the veil can be lifted? To know that tonight is not my night to experience beauty or grace?

It's true that gratitude can make us see the beauty in the hard. Some days, though, we need to accept that seeing the blessing is just out of reach.

By Rebecca Maloney