Previous Challenge Entry (Level 4 – Masters)
Topic: MOURNING / MORNING (02/02/23)
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TITLE: My Many-Colored Days Revisited | Previous Challenge Entry
By Laurie Bahlke
02/09/23 -
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There are plenty of days when the world outside looks gray and like the owl in the story, I can only look out and watch as a broken world spins out of control. Hearts break and hope is lost in the gray because it isn’t brief and over quickly, it can, unfortunately, linger day to day.
Purple dinosaurs drag their tales and walk alone whether it be in a child’s imagination or in mine. We all know what walking alone feels like, it is heavy and tiring, washing over our souls until apathy and dried tears fall where we once walked tall and strong.
Mourning the loss of a loved one, a dream that never came to fruition, a friendship that couldn’t survive tests or truths, whatever it is that causes us to weep and to be surprised by depths of grief, is found in the color of brown and the slow, low down feeling that eventually mixes with the grays and purples and can leave us feeling ready to howl loudly from a black, dark space within.
Of course, I don’t go to this level of reflection with the young, but I know that each child is likely at some point in their journey to experience the range of feelings that life and all its uncertainties will usher in.
I love the parts in the story when colors of red, pink, orange, yellow, and green make their entrance and my voice dances in tones of excitement and joy and I hope, a sense of reassurance that things will be okay. I look at the children, their eyes fixed on me and the pages, and I hear their laughter. I sense burdens lifting, giving way to moments of childhood when everything seems possible.
After the dark and after the mourning, after the gray days and the watching, we can kick up our heels and dance like the red pony. We can think deeply like the green fish in the cool of the deep sea. We can dance in pink, carefree and joyful. There is even room to be silly, bathed in orange sunlight like a clowning seal. After the night comes the morning, and in a radiant light, we can see hope in a new day, a horizon set ablaze with the colors of life and the call to start again.
I once worked with a child who had a traumatic history but looking into his eyes the color of a pale blue sky, you couldn’t tell. He smiled, he carried on- he was resilient. “This is my favorite story,” he once whispered in my ear. When I asked him why, he said, “because it’s all me.” “What is your favorite color,” I asked. “Red horse kickin up him heels,” he laughed while hiding his face behind his hands as if it were a secret that he had innocently set free.
I am a green fish mostly. I swim in and out of thoughts and memory, and I ponder. I have felt alone, I have felt sadness and physical pain. I have lost and mourned but I have also cried out and rejoiced. It may sound odd to say but I am thankful for the many ways in which I feel. Sure, some are easier to navigate than others but without each, I wouldn’t know the hardships and triumphs of others. I wouldn’t understand how being low feels or why being yellow and busy is a gift.
In my emotions, I have come more fully to lean on the Savior, to pray in earnest for strength, or to be attuned in the moment and hear the belly laugh of a child. Our heavenly Father grants us joy after mourning and the morning that follows night. Heaven’s colors and the emotions we feel when at home with the Lord will be brighter and lovelier than any we have ever known, and that should give us reason to kick up our heels!
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I've not read that story, so the telling of the colors did not make much sense to me.
But I love all your descriptions.
Nicely done,
God Bless~