“We’ve gotten several inches, but there’s more to come,” I said to Keith as we gazed out the keyhole windows. Snow covered the deck and beyond – that was evident. But what was memorable was the “more to come” after the “but.”

But grief

During the storm, our neighbors lost his elderly mother. Then at church yesterday, I ran into a woman who’d lost her husband a few months ago. In both cases they said, I’m sorry, apologizing for their tears. It is an honor to share your grief, I said, giving them a hug or two and more.

As Stephanie Duncan Smith wrote in Even After Everything: The Spiritual Practice of Knowing the Risks and Loving Anyway, “It is only human to seek consolation for our pain, but the consolations we crave most will never be found in making less of it. The greatest consolation will never be sourced in scrapping for bright sides, empty speculations of why, but in the full-stop validation: Your pain is real.”

Did you notice the “but” in each of the two sentences quoted above? But do not make less of your grief; but do validate your pain. Remember more what comes after the “but.”

But hope

I woke this morning, thinking about the “but pain-but hope” choices we make every day—a choice dramatically captured in Frank R. Stockton’s “The Lady or the Tiger.” The short story tells of a semi-barbaric king who discovers his daughter has a lover, a man below her station. As punishment, the king orders a public trial by ordeal. In an arena, the man must choose between two doors. If he’s lucky, he’ll choose the door behind which is a lady, one of the princess’ attendants, who the man must marry on the spot. Behind the other door is a starving tiger and sure death. No one knows which door hides his fate, except the princess who made it her business to find out. Her lover knows this and, in the arena, looks to the princess for guidance. 

But the princess hates the lady, who she suspects is in love with the man. Although the thought of her lover’s death haunts her, seeing her lover happily married to the hated waiting lady seems to pain the princess more. Either way she loses. By the time of the trial, she makes her decision and gestures to her lover without hesitation. The last line of the story: “And so I leave it with all of you: Which came out of the opened door – the lady or the tiger?”

That it will be the lady has always been my hope since my eighth-grade English class read the short story. But hope. The potential we ‘semi-barbaric’ people have for kindness and courage when we find ourselves having to choose between the pain of loss and the more painful: watching our lover love someone else. I want to think the princess and I would remember less the pain that comes before and more the hope that comes after the but, the “but” more painful to us but good for others.

But God

My eighth-grade classmates all chose the tiger, and accused me of being a Pollyanna. Maybe they were right, but I’d like to think I already knew there was something larger than me—the capacity we have that comes not from us but from God.

This is the reality my friend Marta embraced again and again as a foster child and now as an adult, in her support of Isaiah 117. Her grief and pain are real, but so is her choice of hope over pain; her faith that she is not alone, and that the capacity we have to choose not the tiger but the lady comes not from us but from God. 

To remember less the snow before but the “more to come” after the BUT.

Linkup with Five Minute Friday:  https://fiveminutefriday.com/2025/02/13/fmf-writing-prompt-link-up-but/