Joy and Grief

Well, its been another 4 years! whoops!

Maybe I will get around to uploading my other essays from my diploma of ministry.

So After my year of study I managed to get a job as a caretaker at a primary school, it was a good job but there was no way for me to progress in that job and after about a year I had learnt everything I could.

I am now in a job as a Gardner / Sexton. Yes, that's right, if you need to get rid of a body, I can be of service. I never pictured myself digging graves, but it's funny how life (or should I say God) works things out, how it all stumbles together to reveal something that you never thought you would be passionate about. Like learning botanical names for plants! Gee I used to despise those plant nerds that would use the botanical name, but now I'm one of them!

So I work at a cemetery, please excuse my excessive use of cemetery puns. I'm surrounded by graves, and it is a grave reminder (see I cant help myself) of the fragility of life. I know a few people buried at my Cemetery, let me tell you about one of them.

When I was a youth pastor, she came to my youth group, she was a normal teenage girl I suppose, trying to figure out life and survive the chaos of high school all while becoming an independent adult.
I'll never forget the moment when I received a phone call about her on Christmas eve 2013. It was one of my youth leaders telling me that this young girl had killed herself. I remember the feeling of my heart sinking, the lump in my throat and the bomb going off in my head as I attempted to process what I just heard and respond to my friend on the other side of the call. I was in the middle of a Christmas Eve dinner and as the Joy of one family was all around me, there was grief in my heart and most definitely grief in the family who had just lost their daughter. Her name was Anitta. I walk past her grave regularly.

In life, we have these unforgettable moments.Moments of joy.
Moments of grief and loss.
Moments of purpose.
Moments of hopelessness.

I'm not going to write blogs/journals as if I have some great revelation to share with the world, I will simply share my thoughts and my heart, and whatever small amounts of wisdom I've learnt in life.

Currently, my job is to maintain the Cemetery grounds and bury people. I am from time to time particularly touched or moved by funeral services that I have to attend as a Sexton. Funerals that remind me how much one life can touch so many other lives around it. It doesn't matter if this person was famous or whether they ever made it on the 6 o'clock news. They lived and they loved, and they are remembered for that.

I now have two sons in my life, I have moments of absolute joy in my boys as they light up when they see me, as they run to me to give me a hug because I'm home from work, moments of immense pride as they achieve something they could never do before and grow into little people whos lives will also touch countless lives around them.

And yet I have moments of frustration and impatience in my new journey of parenting. I have moments of anger when I have to work for a corporate company whos only concern is their profits and their shareholders, when you have to be part of a system which pushes people down to the bottom of the ladder and is designed to keep them there, unless you show 'potential' and are willing to buy in to their 'vision'

I cant help but feel that in life as we have these moments that feel like polar opposites, it is hard to deal with. And yet If we didn't have one we wouldn't appreciate the other. Without loss, we would not truly appreciate those that we still have. Without frustration, we would not understand Joy. And when faced with adversity and mean spirited people, we might not be able to identify the moments in life which are done truly out of selfless love.

We have these moments, of Joy and Grief. Both different experiences, yet both necessary and both worthwhile.