5 Friday Favorites: May 15, 2026
It's time for my Friday link up with A Little Bit of Everything and Momfessionals.
On Fridays I share things that made me happy from the week - a photo, a song, a quote, a beauty product, a recipe, a pair of cute shoes, etc. If it's a product, sometimes it's something I actually own and sometimes something I just saw online that gave me a smile. Sometimes it's serious and sometimes it's silly. I suppose I believe that God is in the simple details of life and yes, I can even find Him in a tube of lipstick.
Hey, Friends.
This week marked the third Mother’s Day without my mom. For reasons I don’t understand, this year when I woke up on Sunday, I felt her absence more deeply than last year. Grief is such a weirdo. Just when I think I’m rid of its intensity, it shows up again and knocks the wind out of me.
Anyway, I couldn’t quite pull it together that morning, so for a little while I just let the sobbing come. I went into my closet and fished through a plastic storage bin until I found a large Ziploc bag. The bag was bursting at the seams with condolence cards sent to me after my mother died. So I sat on the floor of my closet and read them one by one. Tucked in a card from my friend, Lisa, was a poem. I don’t remember reading it three years ago. I guess that’s another aspect of grief. I don’t remember a lot about those first few weeks.
I read the poem and then stuck it in my desk drawer on Sunday afternoon, knowing that there would be another day when I would need to return to it. I didn’t know how soon that day would come.
Just yesterday Steve and I found out that we lost a good friend. The news was sudden, shocking and utterly heartbreaking. And on top of that, today marks 10 years since we heard the news of the loss of another friend - sudden and shocking and heartbreaking. And so, I returned to the poem quicker than I expected I would. No matter how many times we hear that tomorrow is not promised, no matter how many times we have experienced grief, our hearts just cannot seem to grasp the truth that life is so uncertain. Shockingly, heartbreakingly, infuriatingly uncertain.
If you have experienced loss this week or last week; last year or 10 years ago, I hope this poem will bring you some measure of peace. It certainly is a fearful thing to love. I guess that’s why “Do not be afraid” is commanded so darn many times in the Bible. He wants us to be sure to know that love is always worth it.
‘Tis a Fearful Thing
By Rabbi Chaim Stern
‘Tis a fearful thing
to love what death can touch.
A fearful thing
to love, to hope, to dream, to be -
And oh, to lose.
A thing for fools, this,
And a holy thing,
a holy thing to love.
For your life has lived in me;
Your laugh once lifted me;
Your word was a gift to me.
To remember this brings painful joy.
‘Tis a human thing, love.
a holy thing, to love
what death has touched.
This is all I have today. Have a blessed weekend.