​PLENTY OF ROOM

​It is possible to hold more than one big emotion in your heart at the same time.

 
Wisdom Wherever You Find It
 
It is possible to hold more than one big emotion in your heart at the same time.  Ann Moline
 
Just the other day, we received a 16-second video clip of our 10-month-old granddaughter cracking up into hysterical laughter as her father squirted a tiny amount of food from a tube onto a cracker for her. The sound is so joyous you can’t help but laugh along with her, even if the precipitating cause is as mundane as you can imagine.
 
Around the same time, we were discussing the upcoming first birthday of our grandson which he will never celebrate. That day carries with it a reminder of the most devastating personal tragedy our family has ever known.
 
This past year has been a continuous lesson in the wisdom of Ann Moline’s observation. Three babies were born last summer; two of them survived past their fourth month. The loss was unexpected and statistically near impossible. And it occurred in immediate proximity to the beginning of the catastrophe in Israel. Meanwhile, two other babies grew and thrived and filled the lives of those around them. As one of them sprouted flaming red hair and the other managed to climb out of his crib before anyone knew he could pull himself up, we delighted in new teeth, new sounds, new pictures. Each milestone was both celebration and reminder.  
 
I will acknowledge that I worried about how to open my heart completely to both sets of emotions simultaneously. It’s not like our family had separate gathering times for some of us who were happy and some of us who were sad. Its not like we could predict when a wave of grief would wash ashore or when a little one would dissolve into unbridled cackling. It’s not like we could choose among our children in these moments any more than in the decades past.
 
But during one of the many hours that Ann and I sat alone together, absorbed in the challenge of navigating the unfamiliar landscape, she shared this profound truth she had discovered, however tentatively at first. The heart – not the physical muscle, of course, but the space we designate to warm and break and soar and ache – will make room for all of it. A heart awash in joy will not exclude grief. A heart in pieces is yet expansive enough for exhilaration. It is not a contest for real estate, even when the intensity of one seems all-consuming.
 
It was counterintuitive at the time, of course. Every smile felt like a betrayal of mourning, every tear felt like a repudiation of joy. When we surrendered to delight, were we forgetting the tragedy? When we were awash with tears, were we dismissing the laughter? I do not refer here to being appropriately behaved in any given moment. This challenge is, to use a pretentious word, existential. Without this insight, we would have been resigned to a life of guilt.
 
Inadvertently, I came across what some of my clergy friends call Scriptural support for this lesson. The memorial service conducted in synagogue on designated holidays often begins with a verse from Psalm 8: God, what is a human being that you take heed, a mere mortal yet you take note? (Apologies for an awkward translation – it is VERY gender bound in Hebrew.)  It is a peculiar choice, given its context. Psalm 8 is a celebration of life; this verse is preceded by the power of a baby’s voice to attest to creation and followed by a Disney-like fluttering and scampering of woodland creatures. Anyone who encounters this verse in its Biblical context finds it celebratory. Anyone who encounters it in its liturgical context finds it miserable. Yet, there it is, like the heart, holding more than one big emotion at the same time.
 
My illustration of this bit of wisdom is, I expect, sympathetic. Not every big emotion is worth embracing. But I hope it is clear that when one of those other emotions leads to despair, depression, or God forbid, hatred, the heart is big enough to make room for plenty of love.