PAIN!

This week has been difficult for our family. A nineteen year old co-worker of my oldest daughter was killed in a very tragic car accident. The pain on her face as she ran in, fell to the floor, and told me what had happened is that pain, that guttural pain, that is soul deep. It is heart-wrenching, and for a mama it’s doubly hard. I began to grieve for this sweet young man and his family, and I grieved for the grief that my daughter was having to bear. I wanted to fix it! I wanted to make it better! I wanted to say something profound and wonderful! I did none of those things….and in that moment I realized that pain has to just have its way for a while. We have to sit with it, and feel it and pay attention to it, before we can ever begin to devise a plan to move on from it. Now I know this isn’t rocket science, but for me it was a profound epiphany. I am 52 and I have experienced some very painful things in that amount of time…..I know how to sit with MY pain, and I know how necessary that process is. BUT, what I learned about myself in that moment is that when that pain involves my children I have never really given them the freedom to SIT with it. I go into “problem-solver” mode and deny them this essential step in the process of grief…..just plain old sitting with it for a while. In so doing, I have denied them the ability to figure out their own way of processing pain. The day before, another one of my children came to me with a broken heart. I had a complete melt down! Yeah, ME….I had the melt down. You know why? BECAUSE I COULDN’T FIX IT!! When our kids are little it’s so easy…the band-aid, the hug, the ice cream and all is right in their world. Those things just don’t work any more. What they need from me now is a sitting partner. Not a partner who has all the answers and all the solutions and all the advice….nope….just a partner who sits!

Throughout this week my thoughts continue to waft back and forth from this young man whose life was cut so tragically short, to how his family is handling their grief. A grief beyond comprehension. A pain that fails to have any adequate description. We think how easily that could have been our child. How if just one thing had happened differently he might still be with us. We recall every single word and conversation we ever had with that person. There is nothing easy about any of it. There is nothing that feels right about any of it. So young! The pain of grief is truly hateful! God knows, but this side of heaven it will NEVER make sense to us. What do we do with that pain? Well, for me, it emboldens me to treat people well while we still have them with us. It reminds me to say the things I want to say. It empowers me to speak for those whose voices aren’t being heard. It strengthens my resolve to let people know that they are loved and accepted just as they are. We never know when we will have our last conversation with someone. Let that last conversation, that last action towards them, be one that you can feel good about. One that lets someone know that they are loved.

How can we prove to people that they are loved? Let me begin by saying, we need to stop minimizing the struggles of others. Step outside of your comfort zone and do some hard things. A brilliant friend of mine said to me, it’s easier to judge someone than to love them. WOW, that’s a sad but true reality. You see, to love them, you must get to know them, you must walk a mile in their shoes, you must spend time cultivating that relationship…or you can just continue to judge, to assume you already understand the situation fully and have nothing new to learn. Let’s practice love! It might be harder, but it’s so worth it.

Meet people of color and ask them how they feel about racial issues in this country. Not just the one dude you’ve known forever, but a variety of folks from various walks of life. Go hear a person of color speak, watch documentaries and movies based on real life events, read not just about riots and burned buildings…..but about the tragedy of systemic racism and centuries of discrimination. IF YOU ARE WHITE…..YOU DON’T GET TO SAY THEY ARE WRONG! BTW, read “Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Man” by Emmanuel Acho.

Spend time with someone from a religion that looks differently than yours. Go to a service, learn about their traditions and their beliefs. You might just find that you have more in common with them than you think. When I attended the highly conservative church this was frowned upon because it was feared that we would be swayed away from the TRUE “faith”. Maybe the truth is, we would discover that other’s faith is really very much like ours. Maybe they have some different names and traditions, but how arrogant for the evangelicals to think they have a monopoly on the truth of Christ.

Meet the family that is in our country “illegally”. Find out why they are here, what they have been through and why the “legal” way wasn’t an option. Learn about their children, even some that might have been separated from their parents at detention centers. Try to imagine a life in a country where you feel your family is unsafe, and where you feel your children have no opportunities for any kind of quality of life. Can you fathom how that would feel?

Spend time in underprivileged neighborhoods. Volunteer, hand out snacks to the homeless, talk to them, find out their story. I have a bag of snacks and water bottles in my car to hand out to those I see on the street. They always receive it with gratitude and a smile, and sometimes I learn a little something about their life, their hopes and dreams. You might just learn that these wonderful folks are very much like you and me. If they smell, don’t worry, you can go home and take a nice hot shower in one of your 2 or 3 bathrooms.

Get to know someone from the LGBTQ+ community. Learn about them as a human being. Watch them interact with their spouse or loved one. I promise you it’s beautiful and it’s not contagious for crying out loud! Honor someone’s gender identity…if you don’t know what that is, spend some time learning about it. Use a person’s preferred pronouns…it won’t kill you and it will make a world of difference to someone else. You know what I did….I told a transgender person the other day that their eyelashes were lovely. You know what happened? They smiled and so did I! 🙂

All of these actions just involve a little more love and a lot less judgement. You see, if you get to know someone, actually meet them where they are at, it becomes much more difficult to pass judgement on them. You begin to realize that people from all walks of life, with all kinds of different stories and with all kinds of joy and pain are all just people that God loves. It it not your job to correct them, school them, point out how they are falling short (I promise you are falling short too), it is your job to LOVE them. And if you wake up in the morning and find out that they have left this world far too soon, you will know that you did everything within your power to let them know that they were honored, respected, heard and loved just where they were. Not to mention, if you are taken out sooner than expected….you can meet Jesus knowing that your last acts were acts of love!