I’ve been watching for a sign, hoping for a change. A broken relationship ripples far and deep.

But change hasn’t come. It may never come in the way I hope.

The clock ticks on. I feel the pressure of lost time, every day, every season.

I’m out of options. None of my efforts have borne fruit. I feel like giving up.

We all experience losses. Some of them leave bigger holes than others. For the ones that create another Grand Canyon, pain piles into the pit, filling every empty corner.

In those days, when looking backward makes us sadder for what we no longer have, and looking forward brings tears for what is out of reach, we can only show up in today.

Today I notice my breath, in and out. I feel my fingers still typing. I see words on the screen pouring out of my mind, still working. I have breakfast in my belly, clothes in my closet, a partner by my side.

I have provisions. I have purpose. I have people.

This week I’m rememorizing Matthew 6:30 for the Summer Memory Challenge. Here Jesus is urging his followers to know they are loved, that they are cared for.

“But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?”

I see the grass in my own “field,” the front and back yard greenery that Jeff just mowed. Yesterday it was taller. Today it is shorter. Tomorrow it will inch higher yet again.

It’s never exactly the same two days in a row.

The only day I see it, feel it, smell it, is today.

I don’t know when or if my big loss will be resolved. I can only know that even if this pain lives alongside me the rest of my days, I’m not abandoned. I have love, I have God, I have grace.

Like the grass of the field, I’m here today. And on some tomorrow, I’ll be gone. Just like everybody else.

But today. Today. On this day in July of 2023, on this chair in this living room on this patch of earth, I’m still breathing, still thinking, still typing. I still matter. So do you.

And we always will.

Share your thoughts in the comments.

No Words

She abruptly stopped talking as we stood outside her front door. She asked if we could wait here a minute. We said yes.

When she came back, she handed us a piece of paper. On the front was a picture of a man. On the back was his funeral program.

Our friend explained that this was her brother. He had committed suicide on Thanksgiving Day.

She was still reeling from the loss. She went back inside and brought out more photos of her brother.

She needed to show who he was. She needed to talk about him.

We said relatively little.

Who Cares?

Often we’re caught off guard by the stories that people share with us. If we just happen to be in the right place at the right time, we might catch the overflow of emotions from someone else’s pain.

But what about when we know in advance that they’re hurting?

• How often do we intentionally step into another person’s heartache?
• Are we more likely to run into the pain or run away from it?
• And if we do choose to avoid it, why?

For me, I often allow my doubts and fears to override my good intentions. I’m afraid I won’t know what to say.

Or I’m afraid I’ll say the wrong thing (because sometimes I do). So I don’t even show up.

If the only choices I see are perfect or nothing, I’m tempted to choose nothing at all.

Which leaves the other person thinking I care nothing at all.

A Different Focus

Likely we’ve all been on both sides of this. Sometimes we’re the one who doesn’t show up. And sometimes we’re the one that others don’t show up for.

In both scenarios, we hurt.

What can we do about it?

If possible (and granted, it isn’t always possible), if your friend is hurting, bolster your courage to show up in person by knowing this truth:

It’s less about what you’ll say, and more about what you’ll hear.

Otherwise, when we assume the opposite—when we think what we will say is more important than what they will say—we shut the other person down.

Release the pressure on yourself to have the right words.

You’re not there to take away their pain; you’re there to make room for it.

Let go of what you think you should say. Focus more on what they are saying.

People feel loved more when they are seen and heard.

Grace Flows

But what about when you are the one with the heavy heart?

Be honest with your friend who wants to help. If they do unintentionally say the “wrong” thing to you (give them the benefit of the doubt when possible), it’s okay to gently let them know that they’re making your pain worse.

And if they truly want to be helpful, they will listen to you and believe what you’re saying. They will change their words or behaviors going forward.

Grace flows easier when we’re invited to participate in the conversation about our own pain.

Connect More, Heal More

Bottom line, when someone around you is hurting, make it more about them than about you. Listen more than you talk.

And when you are hurting, allow yourself to be vulnerable in the presence of a safe and trusted friend. (Never obligate yourself to spill your guts to just anyone!)

What we all need—whether we’re the one doing the consoling or we’re the one in pain—is to feel community. More connections make the load easier to bear.

Our imperfect presence matters more than our perfectionistic absence.

By being human together, we’re being Jesus to each other. This is one way God works in the world.

Use Your Ears

We listened to our friend at the door as she shared more about her brother. She cried. We cried.

We had no magic words to relieve her pain. We had no advice to give or stories to share. We felt we had done so little as we walked away.

Because our friend was still sad, of course.

But we could also tell she had felt seen, which is something we all want.

When space opens up to relay our suffering with other human beings, everyone is the better for it.

If lending our ears more than our mouths can make even a small difference, may we all learn to listen more and talk less.

“Funny, how we worry about having the right thing to say, when listening is so often what people need most.”
– Anonymous

Who has really listened to your pain? Did it help? Share in the comments.

sharing at these linkups

I only discovered this following quote last week. It was written by author and activist adrienne maree brown on October 2, 2017, the day after the 2017 mass shooting in Las Vegas where 60 people were killed and over 400 people were wounded by one man.

But it still resonates with me in these times of hurricanes and wars and more shootings and just plain ol’ rotten days that we all have.

“we must, each of us, fix our attention on the nearest wound, conjure within us the smallest parts of ourselves that are still whole, and be healers. heal with words and prayer and energy, heal with money, clean water, time and action.

there’s enough destruction. there’s enough nothingness swallowing the living world. don’t add to it. there’s enough.”

– adrienne maree brown

[Read adrienne maree brown’s entire blog post here.]

In the midst of bad things, hard things, even evil things, we each still have the ability to look at each other through the eyes of God. And offer compassion.

We can’t heal every wound. Maybe not even any wound.

But we can fix our attention on the “nearest wound” in our current circle of humans. And lend a hand up there.

And just for today, maybe that’s enough.

Share your thoughts in the comments.

The Giveaway

I think, “I can sneak by this time. Maybe she won’t notice.“

If my voice is calm and my words are coherent, who can tell?

But within minutes after sending my Marco Polo video to her, I receive a Polo in return.

It is from my older sister. She can tell. I can’t get past her. She’s known me too long.

The red nose is always a giveaway. She spots it, even in a grainy Marco Polo video.

And it tells her I’m not doing as okay as I wanted to show.

She Is One

My sister calls me out gently. She says it looks like I’ve been crying.

She’s right, of course.

Minutes before I’d recorded my video to her, I had been crying. About many of the same things as the week before. And the week before that.

Some griefs don’t ease up with time.

And thankfully, neither do some people.

I count my sister as one of my Grief Partners. She’s one of a handful of people who have proven to be an in-person safe haven for me. I can fully share my heart with my Grief Partners. They’ve been here with me through it all.

I don’t expect them to feel the same things I feel. But I’ve learned they care that I feel those things.

Marisa Renee Lee says this about her Grief Partner in her beautiful book, Grief Is Love:

“A Grief Partner isn’t about sadness as much as it is about support. …You need your Grief Partner to be nonjudgmental and actively supportive. …I don’t expect him to share all of my feelings, but I do request and expect that he meet them with empathy, understanding, and love.”

Not Everyone

Has someone been your Grief Partner in a season of sorrow? It’s not always who you expect. And those you expect may not be the ones. Additional losses, even of friends, can multiply during grief when you aren’t at your best.

Many friends may want to help. Their intentions may be wonderfully good. But they have their own sorrows, too, their own joys, their own legitimately busy lives. (And perhaps even their own discomfort or genuine lack of empathic skills.)

While hearts are sincere, presence can be inconsistent. Sporadic texts or emails can feel too draining to reply to.

Not everyone can be your Grief Partner.

Partners Are Gifts

But to those who can be your Grief Partner, who are available to initiate regular check-ins—and who dare get close enough to see if your nose is red—these are true gifts from God.

Ultimately, I believe God is our grand Grief Partner. God understands our every ache of the heart and body.

But I also believe God’s in-the-flesh love arrives through people. God uses humans to distribute the hugs, conversations, and casseroles. God partners with us through each other’s grief. What a responsibility for us. But also what a privilege.

May you be blessed with your own Grief Partners when needed.

And may you be a Grief Partner when someone needs you.

Who has been a Grief Partner to you? Are you currently helping someone else through a season of grief? Share in the comments.

sharing with Paula and Corinne

Cut It Down

They’re cutting down the tree today.

Buzzzzzz. That’s the sound I hear through my ears.

But the sound I hear through my heart is louder. Children laughing. Leaves tossing. Dogs being petted. Bubbles being chased.

All under the shade of that tree.

But now? Gone. Replaced with tears. Loss. Emptiness.

With every limb that drops, a memory drops with it.

But it’s more than the tree that’s breaking me.

Two Trees

We have (well, had) two trees in our front yard. One is the required Yoshino cherry tree per our neighborhood’s original covenant. Everybody used to plant one. In the spring the neighborhood was lit up with beautiful light pink cherry blossoms. It was fabulous.

But times change.

As the years went by, either the neighborhood covenant was no longer passed around, or the residents discovered no one enforced it, so why bother planting a cherry tree.

There are still enough cherry trees in the older yards to make it worth your drive through the neighborhood though. I’m glad about that.

But the second tree in our yard was a water oak. It’s the tree nearest my daughters’ two bedrooms.

We bought the tree as a sapling when we moved into the house in 2001. It was a little crooked, a little malformed, so we got it cheap.

It started small, but after 20 years, it’s grown straight and tall and round. And big.

So big that its limbs brush against our roof. Its leaves clog the gutters. Its roots threaten the foundation of our house.

It took a lot of convincing, but I finally agreed. Okay. Cut the tree. Take it down.

No Turning Back

But now that it’s happening, I want to change my mind. I know it’s not reasonable.

Seeing the bareness left behind is too much because I’m in a season where other things have also been cut out of my life.

Things I didn’t agree to lose. Things I have no control over. Things that are far more important to me than any tree.

But now it’s done.

The spot where the tree once grew is now empty.

Empty is how my heart feels too. The front yard is a visible reminder of it.

In time, maybe we’ll plant something else. Something further from the house. Something that won’t cause us damage one day. Smaller. More manageable.

But today’s not the day. Today is the day we pay the tree trimmers our money and they take away our tree.

I feel the cuts in my heart. But my heart is still beating. I still have multiple joyful reasons to live and laugh and love.

I change my gaze from the front to the back yard. The back yard has so many trees I can’t count them. We planted very few of them ourselves. Most are here as gifts of time and grace and God. Strong, healthy, beautiful.

But one day they will be gone, too. Nothing here is forever except Love. Refusing to accept the impermanence of everything else in our daily existence only causes extra suffering.

As I grieve my losses, I’ll take in the fuller picture, both front and back, both things that have changed already, and things that surely will change later.

And say thank you for the blessings of today, the ones still here in this moment.

There are many.

Share in the comments.

READ MORE:

• When You’re Not Sure How God Works
• But It’s Mine! Why We Can’t Let Go
• 5 Ways to Deal with Your Thousand Little Deaths

Everybody knows pain. We’ve all experienced suffering. And probably of every type: physical, mental, emotional, spiritual.

In the midst of our pain, we likely want to pray it all away and be done with it.

God doesn’t always whisk away our pain though. And even though he does stay in it with us, it still hurts. What then?

It helps if we’re able to find purpose in our pain.

In this week’s featured post, Donna shares 3 ways that pain has a purpose at her blog, Serenity In Suffering. I encourage you to read what she shares, then link up your own post below.

3 WAYS PAIN HAS A PURPOSE

Thanks for sharing, Donna! Here’s a button for your blog.

1. Share 1 or 2 of your most recent CHRISTIAN LIVING posts. (No DIY, crafts, recipes, or inappropriate articles.) All links are randomly sorted.

2. Comment on 1 or 2 other links. Grace & Truth linkup encourages community.   

3. Every host features one entry from the previous week. To be featured, include this button or link back here on your post (mandatory to be featured, but not to participate).

We encourage you to follow our hosts on their blogs or social media.

MAREE DEE – Embracing the Unexpected
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Now Let’s Link Up!

We passed the year anniversary of Stan’s death on March 15, 2020. It was one of the last days we could enter a restaurant to eat together, and the first day that in-person church was canceled.

We again wore Auburn colors, went to the cemetery after lunch, and celebrated Stan’s life.

We also remembered the lives of those who worked to spare his life.

And now in this deadly era of COVID-19, these nurses and doctors are again foremost in our minds.

May God bless those of you who are the healers in the wake of this new coronavirus. You are our heroes. You are God’s special servants.

And to the families of the healers? You deserve special blessings, too, for the sacrifices you are making. May God keep you all safe.

Why I’m Sad

I’m sad.

I didn’t like seeing Stan connected by tubes to bags on IV poles. I didn’t like that he needed round-the-clock care in ICU for week after long week. I didn’t like that the lights always needed to be on, that the machines always needed to beep, that the nurses always had to stick and measure.

I drove home from the hospital that last Friday morning, March 15, 2019, one final time of leaving Stan’s now quiet and empty Room 11 that he’d occupied for so long.

I opened my Lent prayer app to the prayer-of-the-day.

This is what God had planted for March 15.

We Still Need People

Stan died in the early hours that Friday morning. Monday was his visitation. Tuesday was his funeral. Stan was the husband of Kathy, one of the Four Corners, one of my life-long best friends.

I’ve known Stan forever. First as my big brother’s friend, then as my own friend.

Those previous few months, I watched Stan breathe through one machine and watched his blood circulate through another. Modern medicine can seem quite miraculous.

But technological improvements alone still aren’t enough.

We still need people.

So now, even though I’m sad, I’m also grateful.

Here’s to the Healers

I applaud you who work with the sick and dying, you who are strong for the weak, you who stay up late and get up early so patients can have 24-hour medical attention.

The 6th floor medical staff in the Cardiac Care ICU at our hospital that took care of Stan (Anna, Taylor, Will, Des, Brandie, Leslie, Mallory, +) are more than phenomenal workers, they are phenomenal souls.

They know what to do with their school learning: they adjust levels and change out lines and read x-rays.

But they also know what to do with their emotional instincts: they offer genuine hope and they give generous care and they cry real tears.

They have more than skill. They have heart.

So here’s to the nurses, the doctors, the assistants, the caregivers: Keep doing what you do. Keep nurturing and protecting and tending to us when we’re sick, when we get better, and even when we die.

We need you. We pray for you. We love you.

Thank you for how you took care of Stan. And thank you for how you took care of us.

* * *

Do you work in the medical field? Thank you! Have you had a good experience with your medical caregivers? Please share in the comments.

revised from the archives

As society modernized, people found themselves able to live independently from any communal group.
A person living in a modern city or a suburb can, for the first time in history, go through an entire day—or an entire life—mostly encountering complete strangers.
They can be surrounded by others and yet feel deeply, dangerously alone.
– Sebastian Junger in Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging

I was unloading groceries last week.

As usual, I was trying to make as few trips as possible from the car to the house.

In my haste, I scraped my knuckles against the metal of the car. It hurt. I bled.

As the week went by, I kept re-injuring my wound. Who knew how often we unintentionally rub our knuckles against things all day long?

So I started wearing a band-aid to protect the scabs.

When I showed up on Thursday to read to Jenna’s kindergarten students, what did they notice first? My band-aid.

With oohs and ahs, they’d say, “You have a band-aid! Why???”

But not all wounds come with a band-aid.

And so they go unnoticed.

Jay (not his real name) is one of the young men that Kay and I deliver meals to each week. He has a chronic illness, but you’d not know it by looking. Only when Jay began losing weight and looking more pale did we realize he was getting sicker.

When we asked, Jay told us how sick he really was. And equally as important, he told us how tired he was of being sick. To the point of suicide.

Invisible wounds are often carried in isolation. What can’t be seen is often not shared. And not given treatment as quickly or thoroughly as a more visible ailment.

I sometimes wish our bodies came with outer gauges:

• “Has a headache”
• “Didn’t sleep well last night”
• “Joints are hurting”

Visible signs of pain might help us be more gentle with each other.

Instead, we have to pay closer attention to more subtle clues, the invisible band-aids, like slower steps or shorter answers or change in weight.

And we have to ask questions, genuinely listening for the answers.

We didn’t have any solutions for Jay’s illness or his depression. But we could at least listen, offer prayers for relief, and let him know he is not alone.

While wounds may sometimes be invisible, people should not be.

I continue wearing a band-aid on my knuckles. If I still need it next Thursday, I’ll try to replace it with a cuter one for the kids.

Because they will notice. Then they will ask.

May we be more like the kids.

* * *

What tips you off to someone else’s pain? How can you tell they are hurting? Please share in the comments.

“In this day and age, we may not fear the next comet (or do we?), but we do worry about something less rare: the report of an abnormal medical test.”
– Bob Cutillo

She was in her car, waiting in the line for the handicapped. For those unable to stand in the long line wrapping around Manna House Monday night, the back dock was serving as a drive-through area to pick up the free Thanksgiving food.

She rolled her window down and we chatted. I asked if she needed prayers for anything because don’t we all?

Her answer woke me up.

Yes, she said. Health care. I’m scared. I’m afraid I’m not going to be able to get health care under the new President.

I listened to her. Because fear of pain and sickness is real. For all of us.

If there’s anything that can ruin our plans, it’s a breakdown of our body.

Pursuing Health in an Anxious Age

Although it wouldn’t have been helpful Monday night to tell my new friend about a book I’d just finished reading, I can tell you about it.

It’s Pursuing Health in an Anxious Age by Bob Cutillo, MD. It isn’t a long book (~200 pages), but it is a deep book.

It offers important discussions on something we all care about: our bodies.

In the book, Cutillo addresses our need to feel in control of our bodies. We like to think: If I live right, take the right medicines, and trust in God enough, I’ll be fine.

But we all get sick anyway.

It shouldn’t surprise us. Cutillo reminds us we were created as dependent beings from the very beginning.

We have limits.

“Our limitations are not out at the edge of our existence but at the center of our being. If our limits were at the boundaries, we could always push them farther and farther out, applying our reason and developing our technologies and solving the problems that limit us at the edges of our lives.

But that is not who we are and how we have been made; our limits lie at the middle of our creaturely existence and, if truth be told, we don’t like that.”

We don’t like the hurts we already have, and we’re often fearful about the unknown pain yet to come. If we’re old enough, we know how vulnerable our bodies are.

Body as Blessing

But we’re not left without hope.

“Because God came in a human body, a new perception of the body is offered.”

Our body is a gift and “intimately connected to our destiny.” Each of our bodies—even with their limits—has a direction and intentionality to carry out.

Our bodies may be vulnerable, but they are purposeful. We are more than our diseases.

“If the form of our body is not incidental but essential, the sooner we embrace our body, the sooner we embrace our destiny.”

And the ultimate physical death we each have to face? As believers in Jesus, we know death has been defanged.

“When we don’t ‘cling anxiously to life,’ we are freed to embrace it more fully.”

Health in Community

Cutillo’s concluding chapters are about living as community. We share this vulnerability of broken bodies with every other living being on the planet. He elaborates in the book on these three points:

1. Seeing you depends on seeing me in you.
2. My health depends on your health.
3. The health of society depends on how it cares for its poorest members.

We may not enjoy bearing each other’s pains, but it is a godly mandate for everyone’s good.

“To permit the pain of another to come near because we know that we are likewise vulnerable is also a burden—but better to be burdened than buffered and blind.”

Stand Together

In the end, the best hope I could offer the scared woman in her car Monday night about future health care was that, regardless of what happens next, we would stand together, with God in our midst. She wouldn’t be alone. Together is always stronger.

This woman may or may not ever read Pursuing Health in an Anxious Age, but if you can and I can, perhaps we’ll stay motivated enough to keep the proper perspective, not only about our bodies, but about each other’s as well.

* * *

Related:

• Body, I Forgive You
• Are You Getting Better?
• When Pain Gets Too Noisy

How do you handle physical pain? Have you already faced your fear of death? What happened? Please share in the comments.

My thanks to Crossway
for the review copy of this book

“Pain is never permanent.”
– Teresa of Avila

S—Sickness

I hate being sick. Who wants pain? No one.

Yet in our pain, we often seek God. We know he can provide comfort and healing.

When relief comes, hopefully we thank him and are grateful.

But when cures don’t come? When God doesn’t provide relief in a way we can feel?

Although hard to do, at least our emotional suffering can lessen if we’ll again respond with thankfulness for grace to live through the pain.

Because even with no tangible results in sight, we can know this:

The process for healing has begun.

God has set healing in motion. It will eventually be complete. We just have to wait it out.

Try This

There are two approaches we can take as we deal with pain, even as we make efforts to alleviate it. Each has merits in the right circumstances.

1. Stay with the pain.
   Allow your mind to focus on the spots where you hurt. Welcome God into those areas to sit with you. Seek acceptance for the situation as it is in the moment (even as you continue to ask for mercy and healing).
2. Distract yourself from the pain.
   When possible, also refocus on other areas of life that bring you joy. Ask God to intentionally divert your attention to things you can do or people you can pray for or just simple pleasures you can enjoy by sitting with him.

Learn More

• When Pain Gets Too Noisy
  I may live my life in this body but may this body never become my life.
• Are You Getting Better?
  When others asked if I were getting better, I never knew how to answer.
• Looking Pain in the Eye
  When God doesn’t end our pain
• Body, I Forgive You 
  How can we love God together if I’m hating on you?

* * *

Are you sick? How do you handle the pain? Please share in the comments.

Coming up tomorrow:

• Week in Review

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