I woke up about 5:00 this morning. Read that Tower 31 restaurant, the lifetime dream of a local couple, is going out of business this week. A friend let us know that their dad met Jesus face to face yesterday. Our dream to build a healing retreat center by a rushing creek in Colorado ended… Leaving Colorado, the promised land, to follow our call. The loss that comes with change. Relationship that just never launch well. Marriages that end way before death do us part. Cancer. Stroke. Heart attack. Not finishing college for many reasons. Not getting to fulfill your heart’s desire. Getting laid off from a job you sacrificed for. Fires that smolder for a while, then just go out. The hope of being married and having children and enjoying someone to love and to be loved by. Yeah, things end or never get a start. Both are deaths. The deep disappointments of hopes that don’t come to pass or the loss of things we love.
So I am feeling a bid melancholy about all of these ideas.
I am not sure I even have anything encouraging to say about this. It's just what is occupying my mind right now.
Our bodies eventually wear out or get attacked by disease that we can’t overcome. And sometimes there are undeniable miracles that leave us in deep awe and wonder. God heals when we are not even praying. And then there is the mystery of why some get healed and others don’t.
Suffering and sorrow weave through everyone’s lives from time to time. Sometimes it comes and stays for a very long season. And for some it’s chronic. There may not ever be a clean resolution. Patience and physical therapy are not the answer. Surgery does not help. It’s just broken. Persistent pain is the landscape that simply becomes a persistent reality.
I have a kind gentle thoughtful friend lost his mom when he was in college. His roommate did not know what to do, so he said nothing. His other guy friends were silent. And one girl just came and sat with him in his sorrow for a long time. He is 75 now. Recently, with moist eyes, he said, “She did not say a word, yet listened to me better than anyone else.”
Sorrow, loss, death, suffering… Perhaps they are best meant to be carried together. As I sit here on my back porch watching the sun come up in the cool of the morning, that is one good idea that feels right. Yes, carry a little piece of the load. Share in each other’s lives.
And suppress saying any spiritual platitudes that just make people feel worse. We had a Christian friend that delivered a stillborn baby. She said that when people would say things like, “Well God needed him in heaven” or “All things work together for good” that it did not help. At all. It made things a lot worse. Of course the Bible is good and true and a living life giving powerful thing. That’s undeniable. And when we are in sorrow we need the kindness of a friend the most. Someone to sit together quietly. Or ask you over for a cup of coffee and maybe a bowl of soup. To sit quietly and let you say whatever you want or need to express. To listen gently. Perhaps to hold you while you weep.
“I have no words.
I will hold your heart tenderly.
I will sit with you in silence for a long time.
And use some words if that feels right.
Let’s just be together and share this thing.”