Today is Chief’s 90th birthday. I hope he celebrated in heaven with fried oysters with all the trimmings and a chocolate birthday cake with ice cream. He would love gardening in this glorious spring. We used to kid him about meeting Thomas Jefferson in heaven and the two of them sitting down together and comparing gardening notes. Days before our family was diagnosed with Covid, Chief bought some seed potatoes at his favorite feed store. We put the bag in the casket with him and told him to share the potatoes with Mr. Jefferson. Thomas Jefferson was quite the gardener. My dad was a wonderful gardener, too, maybe they invited him to join them. Chief loved visiting Monticello and seeing all of Jefferson’s gardens. I know Jefferson brought some ice cream to Chief’s birthday party. Chief loved ice cream. Jefferson is credited with making ice cream popular in the United States.

Found a funny little quote about bamboo from Thomas Stearns Eliot when I was reading some of my old blogs 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 that quote made me think of the early years of my marriage with Chief when Thomas was a baby. I look at my son Thomas tonight, with his 15-year-old son Alexander, thinking Chief was three years older than Thomas is now when Thomas was born. Life and time travel so swiftly.

Today’s sky is a conglomeration of vanilla overcast clouds gathered with thin grey cloud whispers. Everything here in Peachtree City is covered in chartreuse pollen. Never seen the world with this much pollen. My car has been parked here since Thursday and I can’t see through the windshield, it’s painted yellow. Went to my granddaughter’s soccer game this morning and we drove through a fog of pollen. Hopefully the coming rains will help wash it away.

I’ve shed a few tears yesterday and today. Yesterday was my 44th wedding anniversary and today is Chief’s birthday. We made ice cream sundaes to celebrate Chief’s birthday and had a little birthday cake to celebrate my 69th birthday this coming Tuesday. Thomas’ family and their sweet gestures of the birthday cake and singing happy birthday made me cry. When I cry my grandchildren say, “Puppy kisses,” and that stops my tears and warms my heart. I love this quote from an unknown source. “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 from Psalms 56:8 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.”

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 cares 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 worn and well loved quilt. The warmth of God’s love and the peace he offers us is ours for the asking through our prayers. “There are more tears shed over answered prayers than over unanswered prayers,” Saint Teresa of Avila. 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.

“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