Forty-three years ago tonight, I got married to Chief standing in front of the fireplace here in our family’s ancestral home. Happy anniversary, Chief. We had almost forty years together and it wasn’t long enough for me. I love you and miss you.

Found a funny little quote about bamboo from Thomas Stearns Eliot when I was quote searching this afternoon. “Two live as one, one live as two, two live as three, under he bam, under the boo, under the bamboo tree.” For some reason this quote made me think of the early years of my marriage with Chief when our Thomas was a baby.

Today was so pretty, warm bright sunshine, dark blue sky, cloudless all day long. The Maiden of March is still blowing her gale strength wind. The bamboo have been dancing in the wind gusts, perfecting the tango moves of the arrepentida, the balasada, and the cadencia. Been reading up on the tango after watching the bamboo dance furiously in the wind. Never seen such bending and twisting, they seem to enjoy it. They didn’t carry any cardinals on amusement park rides today. Don’t think the cardinals could have held on to their branches in this wind.

The wind chimes have been pounding out angry symphonies, over worked from the winds of March. But the beautiful songbirds have been expressing themselves through their lovely little songs and the bees and wasps have been buzzing their tunes. Spring is busting out all over. The little chartreuse catkin blooms and the tender spring green leaves of the oak trees are so pretty when you look at them together against the dark azure blue sky. So many wondrous colors of green in the spring as the trees dress in their summer frocks.

The afternoon sun was as bright as a lighthouse beacon, resting on a dark blue ocean of sky. I watched a sunset pageant of lights at dusk. The sun walked down the horizon in the twilight of a golden glow as a pale apricot light swept across the skyline. As the sun stepped off the horizon, her gown’s train lit the skyline in a dark champagne pink, the skyline growing dimmer and dimmer till she turned off the day’s lights and kissed Father Sky goodnight. Father Sky waked the decrescent moon and twinkling stars and hung them high on the night’s dark sky. The night came awake. The day has been put to bed.

I’ve shed a few tears lately and I love this quote. “Tears are prayers, too. They travel to God when we can’t speak.” Scripture says no suffering is purposeless. God sees and knows our suffering and is concerned enough with our tears to collect them. Scripture says, “You keep track of all my sorrows. You have collected all my tears in your bottle. You have recorded each one in your book,” Psalm 56:8.

God doesn’t try to validate our sorrow. He wants us to lay our burdens in his hands when life challenges us. Even if our worries seem trivial God will take them seriously. When we are truly brokenhearted and crushed by life’s harshness, scripture says, “The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit,” Psalm 34:18.

Speaking from experience I can say that God’s love can cover you in times of trials like a warm loved quilt. The warmth of God’s love and the peace he offers us is ours for the asking through prayer. Even when the tears are so deep we’re drowning, he will reach down to comfort us, wiping our tears away with the promise and hope of a brighter day. God’s hand is always stretched out waiting for us to grasp it and hold on as he pulls us through our storms of sorrow.

God collects our tears and dries them from our cheeks. Our pain is not unseen by the Lord and we do not cry alone. God can heal the heartache and help us feel the warmth of another day.

“There is a sacredness in tears. They are not the mark of weakness, but of power. They speak more eloquently than ten thousand tongues. They are the messengers of overwhelming grief, of deep contrition, and of unspeakable love.” — Washington Irving