Both...and... Today is Mother's Day and a lot of feelings are surfacing. I heard this "both...and" phrase from Annie F. Downs and other writers over the last few months. It's when you hold 2 seemingly opposing emotions at the same time. Both are valid and sometimes (maybe all the time) you can't have one without the other. 

So today, I hold the "both...and" as I celebrate Mother's Day with 2 daughters in heaven and 2 here on earth. I remember Amanda and Catherine, who first made me a mother (stillborn 30 years ago); and I celebrate with joy for Bethany and Rachel, my 2 grown daughters. I love it when we can be together to laugh, play cards, share recipes, and just be. 

I also hold contentment and longing. I'm so blessed to still have my own Mother on this earth. She is always just a quick text or phone call away even though the miles may separate us, our hearts are woven together in our shared faith in God and love. The longing I hold is in being reunited again with my dear mother-in-law, Joyce, and our daughters, who have gone on to glory ahead of us. I'm grateful for her role as a mother to her son, my husband. //  

It's not easy to be in the "both...and" places in life, but I KNOW that God is with me and will never leave me. He makes ALL things beautiful in His time and in His way! 

"Yet God has made everything beautiful for its own time. He has planted eternity in the human heart, but even so, people cannot see the whole scope of God's work from beginning to end." Ecclesiastes 3:11 NLT

So whether you are celebrating or grieving, being content or longing for a new day, at peace, or feeling anxious, may you focus upward on Jesus!

Happy Mother's Day to all the beautiful women who may read this. All women are nurturers of someone in their lives. Be blessed as you read the picture below and may God make that true in all of us.  

This post was prompted by Kate Motaung's "Five Minute Friday," which she hosts on the Five Minute Friday website. Kate posts a single word each week and each blogger sets a timer for 5 minutes to write and then posts, with little editing. (Some weeks I have more trouble with that part than others.) Check out the other writers this week!