A Better Place For Who? Grief-ism #2

“He’s in a better place.”  

We all say it and it’s not that I don’t believe it. Someone like me, who cut my preschool teeth on the doctrines of the church and has spent my entire life processing through the principles of my Biblical heritage, certainly believes the claims made by Christ himself and others in scripture:

“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” John 3:16

For my Father’s will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day.” John 6:40

“For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands.“ 1 Corinthians 5:1

To the believing thief on the cross Jesus said, “Today you will be with me in paradise.” Luke 23:43

To all of us who believe we return to God when we leave here, to all of us who affirm, “To be absent in the body is to be present with the Lord” (2 Corinthians 5:8), we instinctively know those who die before us are in a better place.

The problem is they’re not HERE with us. Not anymore. Not ever again in this life. And that matters. A lot!

Mike’s absence created a falling domino effect of chaotic change, problems, logistics, emptiness, longing, yearning and loneliness, impossible to describe. A grief so deep and guttural I knew it could rip me apart.

I‘m not one to engage in comparisons of what is worse. Death is hard, for those left behind,  regardless of how it comes. Maybe if he had been sick over a span of time, maybe if I had to watch him disintegrate through prolonged suffering I could say this platitude with more acceptance. But the brutal long goodbye was not my experience so I can’t know. We had no goodbyes at all. He was here. He was fine. Then in a moment he was gone.

Yes, undoubtedly he is in a better place. But while Mike is there, I’m not, and the knowing of this does not balance the scale of grief. However it occurs, our person being in a ‘better place’ is still that person gone for the rest of our life. What I do know, is that in the early raw days of his death, hearing this statement wasn’t comforting. At all. 

What this statement repeatedly told me is Mike is doing great, he’s fine, but my loss, my pain, the fact that I am most certainly not in a better place without him didn’t matter. What I was suddenly up against, this tornado turn of events, felt unacknowledged and completely negated by reassurance that all was well for him, while everything that was normal and secure for me was spinning out of control. 

Of course, there’s no intention of harm when we repeat these catch phrases in someone’s loss. Nothing I say here is meant to criticize only inform. Often we’re so uncomfortable in the stark reality of another’s grief, we feel the need to offer something and these Hallmark card sentiments are all we have.

The truth is there are no words to cheer up the reality of death and for certain nothing can ‘fix’ it. Nothing can begin to fill the void, replace the absence or replenish the emptiness. Nothing but acknowledgement of suffering and personal presence.

At times the overwhelming emotion and personal isolation of grief can also minimize these but with time (lots of it), patience, understanding, listening, hugs, prayer and practical help, we can validate and enter into another’s suffering.

“I’m so sorry, but I‘m here. I‘m with you. As much as I can be. For as long as you need,” is the best offering we can make.

 

Happy Mourning: Grief-ism #1

Those grieving a loss hear this one often, “But he/she would want you to be happy.” 

So what does this really mean? Don’t grieve for them? Pretend the one human, who for the most years and who gave the most meaning and joy to life, is still here? 

Impossible!

The thing is, no one gets to tell you how to grieve. Not even your deceased person. Not even THEY get to dictate how much you hurt or how much you miss them because they’re gone.

Would Mike want me to be happy? Of course. One of his goals in life was to keep me happy (and I him). But neither of us could ever know how hard it is to be happy without the other.

We don’t know how to minimize the giant hole that just opened up and sucked everything that was normal, safe and stable into it so mourners resort to masquerading happiness because that makes everyone around them back off and feel better.

The fresh, horrid grief of those early days has subsided and I finally experience moments of happiness. Small rays of light in the darkness that is Mike’s absence. But it’s taken this long and still, after all this time, an underlying operating system of continual sadness runs in the background of everyday life.

And that’s the point. We can’t rush people back to cheering up or looking on the bright side. The bright side looks bleak and dim for someone who has suffered such monumental loss. Rebuilding an unwanted life from the ground up takes time.

Trish Harrison Warren, author of Prayer In The Night: For Those Who Work or Watch or Weep, says, “We are taught to minimize grief.” 

Allow grievers the time they need to be in their sorrow, let the trigger tears and heart crushing pain play out.  Weep with those who weep, for as long as they weep. 

Eventually we will rejoice with them, because we stayed around long enough to see them discover joy again. 

Only then are we better practiced in comforting the broken hearted.

Introduction To Grief-isms

So what are grief-isms and why do I think it’s essential to talk/write about this? 

Grief-isms are a term I created to describe the cliched sayings we use when someone experiences a profound death loss. Most of these axioms I found unhelpful, non-comforting and sometimes annoying, especially in the early days and months of my experience.

At first I thought I might be a bit crazy but after talking to many people who have had significant loss, especially of a close relationship – spouse, child, parent, sibling, best friend – attending GriefShare group multiple times and following several internet based widowed, grief and loss groups the past several years, I realize I‘m not alone in this opinion.

First of all, not one of us can fully understand death grief, especially early stage, until it’s experienced. And no one knows how they’ll react in it until it happens to them. I‘ve compared it to someone telling me how to labor and deliver a child to actually doing it. There’s knowledge of what it might be like, then there’s being up to your eyebrows in the middle of it. It’s overwhelmingly intense and painful! And you gals who’ve had a baby or two know exactly what I mean.

It’s extremely important to know how intimacy and closeness drive the level of grief when trying to support someone through a loss. The depth and duration of grief is equal to the intimacy and duration of the relationship you, your friend or family member had with the person who has died. They will grieve harder and longer for a child, spouse or family member, than an acquaintance or non-immediate family member rarely seen. 

Also important to understand, is how intense grief effects lessen with time but never totally disappear and anything can trigger a fresh but (probably) shorter response. There is no proper time frame for a person to ‘get over’ a person who has died and ‘move on’. These are also cliched terms that should always be avoided.

All the love, investment and history you have for and with a person doesn’t fade out or shut off once they’re gone. Like I keep saying, There’s No Off Switch! Our people become an intricate part of us and have shaped who and what we are. Forty two years of life with my late husband and four years without him is a no win comparison and I can’t just move on to a happy, slappy brand new life as if he never existed, once the memorial service is over or the headstone is on the grave.

I‘m not here to demoralize or criticize any of us. No one wants grief education. Who in the world volunteers to join the ‘someone I love with all my heart has just died’ club? We don’t like talking or thinking about being without our best people. I get that. Since Mike was a pastor I was exposed to death, funerals, burials and the depths of human sorrow more than most. I realize now I was often just as clueless as anyone, in the face of another’s suffering and said some of these same cliched statements to people in their loss. I openly apologize to you if you were one of these people and hope you can forgive my previous ignorance. 

If we all live long enough, we and others around us will likely loose someone dearly loved, so it’s crucial to practice being good comforters, to know how to be with another in their deepest pain.

The purpose of the blog posts that follow is to share my heart around some of these specific grief-isms and why they weren’t helpful. I pray this information will help all of us be better supporters of the grieving when the need arises. 

Coming up next: Grief-ism #1, “He would want you to be happy.”

Four Years Later

We were driving a main street through Portland, Oregon on a winter day in the late 1970’s. This particular road consisted of five wide lanes, two each headed in opposite directions with a central turn lane.

It was a quieter morning than most, less traffic than usual, because Portland, known for it’s damp, gloomy, rainy winters with temperatures hovering in the high thirties to mid-forties, had experienced an overnight thermometer drop low enough to coat the city with a rare inch or so of snowfall; enough to close schools and a host of other businesses and keep people home.

Since Mike and I had recently moved there from upstate New York and were accustomed to far worse winters, we shrugged it off, warmed up the car and headed out. What we forgot to remember was the frozen rain covered surface beneath the snow.

We confidently motored down the slightly hilly street, commenting on how few cars there were around us on a normally busy thoroughfare, joking about the Portland wimps afraid of a little snow, when our car suddenly began to slide out of control. Mike immediately attempted all the skills learned in his years of northeast winter driving, but there was no stopping it. No way to control the free slide we found ourselves in as the car began to pick up speed while spinning in circles across all lanes, heading straight for a power pole on the opposite side of the road. 

Suddenly heart pounding, pulse racing, breathtaking helpless fear loomed in the horror of grim possibilities just outside the vehicle and we were immediately panic paralyzed inside our out-of-control yellow Toyota.

Such is the nature of grief. And most severely in the early days and even early years of a death experience.

One moment we are riding confidently, securely on the road of life when suddenly a significant loss plunges us into a free fall of heart stopping, breath sucking despair, panic and anxiety. There’s no stopping the flow of turbulent emotions and change that constantly pulse, swirl and crash over us moment by moment, hour by hour and day to day. 

Because we are humans who form deep bonds and connections with others – spouses, children, family, friends – we struggle to control the slide and spin a death creates. The sudden absence of a person we intensely intertwined into most of our days, loved fiercely and counted on deeply, looms monumentally ahead. The future without them is grim and our immediate reality has few favorable outcomes.

After a few terrifying moments on that snowy Portland day, our little Toyota finished careening and spinning and came to a halt, facing the wrong direction on the wrong side of the road just inches from the power pole. Mike took a few seconds to catch his breath, thank God we were spared, then gripping the steering wheel with shaky hands, he pulled back out onto the street and drove us home.

I have no words to adequately describe what my late husband’s death has done on the inside of me. Mike took large chunks of me with him when he left. I may look the same on the outside but I am so far removed from the person I was on this same fateful day four years ago. Yet much of my internal careening and spinning has finally begun to subside during this past year and I can sit on the other side of this journey staring down a road of….what….?? 

For now, I only have gratitude for surviving. I can only thank God for being with me as I land just inches from the thing that almost destroyed me, Maybe now I can catch my breath and with a shaky heart venture back out into this unfamiliar life and see where it goes. 

Without Mike, yes. The sadness of this reality will never end. 

I constantly miss his presence in our lives.  In my life. 

But for whatever reasons he is gone and I’m still here. 

I have to live. 

I GET to live.

Dear Jesus, let this be the year that I figure out how to really live again

 

Blurred

“For now we see through a glass, darkly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; but then shall I know, even as also I am known.” 1 Corinthians 13:12

I‘m still sorting through my late husband’s forty years of sermons, thoughts and reflections, written on paper scraps, napkins, post-its, notebooks, stacked in drawers and cabinets. 

When I think I‘ve exhausted the collection, I find more.  I’m organizing the typed copies into a three ring binder but most I won’t keep. There’s too many, and since Mike’s penmanship was equivalent to a doctor’s handwritten prescription, they aren’t legible without a lot of effort.

This morning, the grief journal I’ve kept since his death, received this entry:

“Now that you’re gone from the limits of time and earth knowledge, into the presence of God, the question running through my mind, as I sort years of your study, interpretation and thought process is, how much of all this is complete truth? How much of it could be misinterpretation? How much of it is just a drop in the ocean of what is yet to be discovered about who God really is? I wish you could tell me what you know now, compared to what you THOUGHT you knew when you were here.”

Humans like certainly. I know I do. It helps us feel ordered, safe, smart, disciplined. Technology has opened up a world of opinion, belief, ideals and thought to sift and categorize. And those of us who read, study and share the Bible, often think we have the corner on figuring out exactly what it means, who God is and what He might want from us. 

According to recent statistics, “there are more than 45,000 [Christian] denominations globally. Followers of Jesus span the globe. But the global body of more than 2 billion Christians is separated into thousands of denominations.” ~Feb 27, 2021, livescience.com~

If true, it’s obvious no one holds the market on certainty with so many Jesus followers (me included) united in their belief of his existence – his birth, life, ministry, death and resurrection – but fractured on the finer points of Biblical content and context.

My late husband dedicated his life to discovering who God is and sharing what he believed. There’s nothing wrong with that. But as I slowly reduce the pile of paper he left behind, I’m thinking we see little more than the tip of the iceberg on what remains to be known. 

When the Apostle Paul talks about “the manifold wisdom of God” in Ephesians 3:10, maybe he was thinking the expanse of who God is never ceases to unfold. He is mysteriously and interestingly complex, variegated and multifaceted and if we think we ever have the entirety of His loving greatness decoded, we are deceiving ourselves.

“For we know in part, and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away.” Corinthians 13:9-10

What does Mike know that we have yet to discover? 

With open hearts and minds we continue to probe the mysteries of God, until our own glass is dark no more.

 

The Hidden Side of Grief

I haven’t had a dream with my late husband in it for almost a year. In the first months after he died I had them regularly, most of them waking me in panic. Last night I had another one.

I was coming out of a building somewhere and as I started walking down the steps, I recognized Mike walking on a sidewalk that was parallel and about seventy five feet in front of me. He had on the bright green golf style shirt he loved and his favorite baseball hat.

My heart burst with excitement and my first thought was, “Oh, he didn’t die. He’s still here!” I started calling to him and picked up my pace, but he didn’t see or hear me. As he reached the end of the sidewalk he was on, he turned right, walking farther away from me. I kept calling his name and started running.

Suddenly, to my horror, he collapsed and two men nearby caught and carried him to the grassy area along the sidewalk, laid him face down, shrugged and went on their way. I screamed his name, begging the people around me to help him. Everyone looked the other way and walked on. I tried running faster and realized I couldn’t close the distance between us because the sidewalk I was on was moving backwards with no way to step off.

I startled awake. It took me a minute to realize it was just another one of ‘those’ dreams. The kind that leave me sad and broken all day.

Why am I sharing this intimate and difficult dream here? Because we have a mistaken belief in our ‘get-over-it’ society that in time, the heart and mind forget what has been lost and how we lost it. Time heals all wounds, right?

It’s been over three and half years now, since Mike died suddenly, unexpectedly and I returned home to find him lifeless in the yard. For the most part, humans have an innate ability to adjust over time. We adapt to the void and even the trauma, that absence and loss carries. Strength and a will to live return and eventually, at times, good memories or new circumstances outweigh the sadness carried.

But we never forget. Our love for them doesn’t end, nor does the longing and yearning for their physical presence. Five, ten, twenty years later our heart can remind us that we had an amazing person in our life that is no longer here. And can also remind us that how we lost them was difficult.

Time might heal the wound but it doesn’t take much to rip that scar open. You never know what another is battling so be patient with those who are once again ambushed by loss. A bit of mercy, compassion and understanding goes a long way to help all who experience the hidden side of lifelong grief.

Resurrection

Her only son is dead. And she’s a widow. Women in her time and culture, had no means of survival or sustenance outside of a husband or son providing it. She is suddenly plummeted into uncertainty and poverty.

We find Jesus walking with his disciples into the town of Nain, and into the middle of this scene, just as this broken hearted, grief stricken widow and her accompanying mourners carry her son’s body outside the town gate to a burial place.

There is no mention this widow had ever heard of Jesus. She didn’t run to Him as others had, begging for help, pleading for the life of her son. Immersed in the depths of loss and sorrow, she was unaware of His presence. 

Grief consumes. It overwhelms everything. At Mike’s memorial service and in the months following, I was mostly unaware of who and what surrounded me. People rotated in and out of my days, brought things, did things, hugged, spoke words. 

I barely remember any of it. It’s all a blur, still. A horrid slow motion video with sight, sound and activity taking place on the far edges of my existence. None of it making sense in the permanent absence of the man who, for years, had been my most intimate partner in life. 

I was the walking dead, a zombie going through the motions of the legalities and responsibilities Mike’s death had suddenly thrust upon me. The entire time my mind repeating like a scratched vinyl record, “He’s dead, he’s gone. How can this be real?” And my heart screaming in refusal to accept what my head already knew. This was it. It’s done. He’s not coming back to us anymore. 

There is this me that understands what the widow was feeling, but what I find most stunning about this account is how it completely implodes the long standing belief that it’s our job, my job, to have ‘enough’ or ‘more faith’ so God will notice, show up and do something. 

How do you have ‘enough faith’ when you can barely breathe? When your heart throbs with aching and your mind is a hurricane of fear, confusion, shock? When you’ve lost all appetite for food, are sleeping only thirty minutes a night and are so physically exhausted the only thing keeping you upright is the adrenaline of grief? 

How?

“And when the Lord saw her..”

That’s it right there! She didn’t see Him. She was unaware. Blinded by her sorrow. Deaf in her lament. 

He saw her. 

“He had compassion on her..” His heart suddenly exploded with mercy and love. 

He understood the desperation of her circumstance and without needing ANYTHING from her. Without being asked. He dried her tears and touched the stretcher that held her son’s cold body. 

Everything and everyone stopped as he returned life to this little family.

Though I begged and pleaded for it at the moment of Mike’s death, I, of course, didn’t get a resurrection story. At least not in the way I would have preferred.  Wouldn’t that have been awesome!

But what I find comforting and am coming to understand, is in the midst of pain, confusion, anger, suffering, sorrow, Jesus is always doing resurrection work. It’s not easy this coming back from the dead, but His compassion, mercy and love does not look away. Never forsakes or abandons.

He Sees. Notices. Touches. Renews. Resurrects.

Even when I don’t know how to trust. And even when I don’t have ‘enough faith’ to see.

It’s Who and What He Is and Does. 

Luke 7:11-15 Soon afterward he went to a town called Nain, and his disciples and a great crowd went with him. As he drew near to the gate of the town, behold, a man who had died was being carried out, the only son of his mother, and she was a widow, and a considerable crowd from the town was with her. And when the Lord saw her, he had compassion on her and said to her, “Do not weep.” Then he came up and touched the bier, and the bearers stood still. And he said, “Young man, I say to you, arise.” And the dead man sat up and began to speak, and Jesus gave him to his mother.

John 11:25 “Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me, though he may die, he shall live”

Breathe

I have always been a believer in the truth that our breath is God given. “And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being” Genesis 2:7.  

We don’t own our breath. We borrow it. He supplies it for life on this planet and when that last breath leaves our lungs we return to Him. Humans have no ability to create the absolutely necessary intangibles of breath and air. They belong to our Creator and thus, we belong to Him.

The evening I returned home to find my late husband dead, I instantly couldn’t breathe. In fact it was difficult to breathe in the weeks, months and even the first year following that life changing event. For months, I gasped for air in the middle of reoccurring panic attacks and often held my breath without realizing it. Breathing, which occurs involuntarily and without thought, became something I was constantly and noticeably aware of in Mike’s absence. The loosing of him literally took my breath away and I wonder now, if the abnormal heart arrhythmia I began experiencing in the months that followed, were tied not only to my broken heart, but possibly a full lack of oxygen it needed to function properly.

In this pandemic year, the literal masking and partial breathing of the oxygen our body needs to fully function has been hard on all of us. We’ve become afraid of the people and air around us. Breathing has suddenly become scary. Fear, suspicion and grief hold us in their grasp as we deal with a variety of great loss – health, loved ones, finances, safety, security, freedom and a lack of cultural civility.

During the past several years the importance of intentionally taking time to stop and breathe has often rescued me. Father God has repeatedly reminded me, His breath is inside me. He holds my life in His heart and hands. I need not fear what is happening around me. Do I still? Yes. Of course. More than I should. But He is patient to reassure when my thoughts wander into crazy territory. He understands how afraid and emotionally frail I am. He has deep concern for my humanity.

He doesn’t condemn, but calls me to be still. Sit quietly for a while. Turn off the noise. The news. The social media. Eat a healthy meal. Drink some water. Share my thoughts with a trusted friend. Stand outside for a few minutes. Walk in nature. Take in the beauty of His creation. Talk to Him with raw and open honesty. Exhale the anxiety and the pervasive and swirling negatives. Inhale Father’s goodness, allowing His peace to permeate the spirit and soul once again. And put this on repeat, like a reminder notification, popping up daily (or even hourly) on a mobile phone.

In the midst of these trying times, every now and then, we have to take the mask off our face and our soul and simply breathe. Don’t forget.

Breathe. 

Breathe. 

Just Breathe.

“The Spirit of God has made me and the breath of the Almighty gives me life.” Job 33:4

“..he [God] himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything.” Acts 17:25

 

Adapting or Accepting?

It took about three weeks of random days, doing a section at a time, but I finally finished pressure washing the pool deck today.

As I was pulling the weeds that grow between the pavers with pliers, because my arthritis crippled fingers aren’t strong enough to grasp them, I was thinking about how adaptable humans are. How we endure and adjust to life’s difficult twists and turns.

The Serenity Prayer has been quoted for a long time: “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, Courage to change the things I can, and Wisdom to know the difference.”

I‘ve had to adapt to many difficult challenges through the years and realize of late, that I have always had a problem with the acceptance line of this quote. I‘ve never been good at accepting what I can’t change because I’m not sure I should. To me acceptance means giving up, giving in to a thing and allowing it to rule, and I see little in scripture or history where that has ever been a good idea.

My first son was born with a genetic disability, and while I accept and love HIM for who HE is, I have never fully accepted the imitations disability has placed on him. Otherwise I wouldn’t have done everything possible to help him reach his full potential through the years. Have I adapted to how his disability affects him, me and our family? Yes, and continue to adjust daily. But I have never rejoiced that my son has not been able to live his life the way others do. I have never stopped grieving in the depths of my being that he still needs continual supervision as an adult. I know in my heart God’s original creation was never meant to be this way, so complete acceptance still alludes me.

All the ways I’ve adapted to having a crippling chronic illness, beginning in my mid-twenties, are too many to list here. Pulling weeds with pliers is just one of hundreds. Learning to eat properly to reduce inflammation in my body is another. Acceptance means I would give up. Lay in my bed, drink soda pop and eat donuts, howling in pain, expecting others to do everything for me. There are times when we need others to do for us, but ‘the wisdom to know the difference’ is part of adjusting to our situation.

I can never accept coming home from grocery shopping to find the man I loved for forty three years, dead. Just like that. Gone. No. Never. Because I know physical separation, death in this life, was never God’s intention from the beginning. Death was chosen and since then, we all live with the physical consequences of this choice. So after a lifetime of marriage, I’m at a new level of adaptation. Learning how to be single. How to be alone. How to get things done that are hard for me to do.

So many of the tasks Mike did are now mine and I’m slowly adjusting to all these new responsibilities; knowing when I should and who I can call for help, who I can trust and when I can do a thing myself. I‘m certain I‘m making mistakes, bumbling along, asking for wisdom, help and endurance to figure it all out but I also understand I have to be patient, even with myself. I’ve been dropped suddenly into new territory, without a map or GPS, and this journey requires a steep learning curve.

As humans we grieve all our losses. Some impact us so deeply, that we never think of them without feeling that sludge hammer of sorrow to the heart and it is a huge misinterpretation of scripture to believe God asks us to deny this reality. What He wants is to be invited into it. To meet us there. To walk with us in and through.

So while I will not blindly accept any of these things that were never His original intention, neither will I pretend they don’t exist. I meet them head on with HIS strength and guidance. I have little of my own.

Many days are exhausting and difficult, but I must not, cannot, settle into acceptance. I must keep trying. Keep asking. Keep seeking. Keep enduring.

By Father’s great grace I adjust. Adapt. Pull weeds with pliers and keep going.

Just Be There

Jon is often a night owl and I sometimes try to be one with him, just to be with him. A few late nights ago, I was lying on the sofa watching determined chefs attempt to cook their best dish in a ridiculous amount of time, competition.

Jon was rustling around in another part of the house.

At one point he came and stood behind me and began repeating, “He’s gone. He’s gone. He’s gone.”

I‘m never sure if Jon is parroting a movie line he’s heard or trying to express a thought. I turned the TV volume down.

“Who’s gone, Jon?”

More repeating, “He’s gone. He’s gone…”

I asked again.

“My Dad. He’s never coming back.”

Grief does not play out on a short path. The journey is long and arduous. We have moments now, when we laugh and smile, but there’s still a pile of sad and edgy and raw and vulnerable. There’s still many days it’s difficult to wrap our brains and hearts around the truth that Mike is missing from us. 

My son in his simple, yet profound voice has stated, here we are, still struggling.

Where will this journey take us? I don’t know. I do know this. When our son was born, I had to become an advocate for the disabled. A few years later I was run over by chronic illness and eventually took up the banner of reclaiming health through lifestyle choices. Now that close and sudden death has taken my breath away, I will become a spokesperson in this modern, sanitized, look the other way, death and grief illiterate western culture, for those whose hearts break. For those who walk the long, shadowed path of living after great loss.   

If it’s true that our mess becomes our message, then it appears I’ve been given something to share. I volunteered for none of these difficulties, (I mean, come on, who does?) regardless, I’m learning our brokenness is not to be hidden or disregarded, but is meant to come along side another, reach out, weep, hug, love with feet and hands on, encourage, and proclaim, “I don’t have all the answers. I don’t know how to fix this but I will not run from your pain. I will not ignore your struggle. I see you and I am here.”

In the time of His greatest sorrow, Jesus wanted his friends near him. As he grieved and struggled with what was ahead, he longed for human companionship. Near-ness. 

“What, you couldn’t even stay awake with me for one hour?” (Matthew 26:40) There was nothing his follower friends could do to change what was about to happen but He needed to know they were there for Him. 

I have come to believe our main calling and purpose in this life is to walk beside each other in all of it’s joy and brokenness. To show up. To just be there.

Do that for someone you know today.

And I pray, if and when needed, someone will do the same for you.

2 Corinthians 1:3-4 “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God.”