The Healthy Duality of Emotions

Sometimes we see the world very much as black and white, and I think we see emotions as that as well. Can I be in the throes of intense grief and yet feel joy? We think it's not possible. We think it has to be either/or. If there is one thing I've learned this last year and a half, it is that what we see as opposites (or perhaps they are opposite sides of the same coin) can actually live in a weird, but beautiful, harmony: grief and joy, beauty and pain, overwhelming sadness or despair and hope, faith and doubt, courage and fear, and I'm sure you can think of more. I'm actually beginning to see that emotional health is allowing these to live together, not to fight any of them, just lean in and let them do their work. This dragonfly represents those opposites for me. It wraps up all of the beauty, grief, pain, faith, doubt, joy, courage, fear, and anything else I could possibly feel regarding my precious Hope. More times than not, I feel a flood of all of those emotions at once when I see a dragonfly, my symbol of Hope, but lately joy at this beautiful sign of love and hope from God fills my heart, even while my heart is sad not to have her here, and I find myself laughing with joy and crying tears of sorrow at the very same time. And I know that God lives right there in the middle of that with me. He lives there with you, too.