Oh, world. I haven’t written many blog posts lately but I
have been reading some, and honestly there are too many out there to even get a
handle on what is going on in the blog world. But here is apparently what I
missed an opportunity to write about and a little teaser of what I would
written if life didn’t have such a pesky habit of getting in my way all of the
time:
1. Syria- don’t do it,
Obama!
2. Miley Cyrus- she’s a
20 year old and in pop music, why is the way she acts surprising?
3. I don’t
remember much else, but that’s how life goes now, am I right? Nothing lasts
very long, we seem to be getting over things quicker because there is more to
see, more to talk about. Something more interesting is just around the corner
so let’s keep checking Facebook to make sure we aren’t out of the loop. And
honestly if you take a few weeks off from the interwebz, you miss a lot.
Everything is so fast paced that hot new topics are quickly
yesterday’s news. But despite the whirlwind of our world today (that I honestly
can’t keep up with, it totally stresses me out), human nature has not sped up.
Here’s what I’m talking about: pain. Just because we stop talking about a
horrific tragedy two weeks later, the people who suffered are still suffering.
They may suffer for years. I am still crying for the people in Syria who lost
the people they love to the gas attacks, I still have those images at the front
of my mind. Those mothers who watched their children die, I am still crying for
them. The news has moved onto the more exciting topic of war with Syria, but I
am feeling their loss and there is nothing exciting to me about taking an
action that may result in other people feeling this loss.
Because I know that long after people stop thinking about
how much pain you’re in, you may still be feeling it every single day. When
people ask you how you’re doing, you answer “Fine” because you feel like you
have to, you feel embarrassed that whatever was hurting a few months or years
ago still hurts. That you are carrying your loss or your hurts or your
struggles with you, and you have not had complete healing yet. You are not free
from your pain right now, and maybe you feel like you never will be. Don’t you
wish you could wear a sign around your neck like in this blog post? Oh I love
this idea so much. It is so hard to say the words, to declare how you are
struggling, but it would probably be easier to wear a sign just flat-out
declaring what you are going through. Sure, everyone would know your business,
but wouldn’t it be freeing? You don’t want pity, I know that, but you do want
compassion. You want to not be alone because you aren’t sure how much more of
this crap life you can take when you feel so much weight on your soul and no
one seems to want to help you carry the load.
When you are so burdened, it is nearly impossible to not see
everyone else as living a perfect life. On a small scale this is like when I
was in my last two weeks of pregnancy with Jude and I was miserable, I couldn’t
help but see everyone who was not pregnant and say to myself, “It’s not fair! Look how not pregnant they
are! She is wearing jeans with an actual button and I’m going to spend the rest
of my life in spaaaaaaaaaandeeeeeeex!” But friends, if you only knew.
People may criticize Facebook for being a place where people carefully craft
their online lives to have the clear message about how happy and carefree their
real lives are, but the truth is that no one wants to read about your sadness
on Facebook. People want you to entertain them and be happy because they went
there in the first place to escape their
own struggles. You see vacation photos and new house pictures, you see
people with their loved ones and funny stories that depict a carefree life of
joy when what you are experiencing is the exact opposite. So, you either post
about your pain or you pretend it isn’t there. Sure, one or two posts are fine,
but after that you may get blocked from the newsfeed. Pain makes us
uncomfortable, especially when we have convinced ourselves that there is nothing
we can do to help that person. And also, hasn’t
it been like six months since whatever they’re still upset about happened? I
mean geez, can’t they move on? Look at
this pic of what I made for dinner!
Like you have a choice. Wouldn’t you love to move on, just
pick yourself up by your bootstraps and get over it already? Wouldn’t you love
to just change your circumstances so you can stop feeling like just the
existence of your struggles is a burden to the people around you? Just get that
job already, get into that school, get married, repair your broken
relationship, get healed? Christians seem to be especially bad about this
because in some circles there is a stigma about experiencing long-term struggles.
Christians have the Great Healer, the Physician, the Creator of the universe, so
why don’t you go ahead and use Him to heal you and come to church with smiles
next week, m’kay? You don’t know how you’ll pay your mortgage this month? Give it God, Honey. Your kid is going to
die unless they get that transplant that you’ve been praying for that seems
like it might never come? All things work
together for the good of those who serve Him, sister. Your mom has
early-onset Alzheimer’s and you can’t afford care for her and you have four
small children and no siblings to help? Well,
God doesn’t give you more than you can handle.
I can’t tell you how many times people are trying to
encourage me and give me those kinds of answers, those platitudes. So much so
that I’ve stopped talking about my pain. If you are going to try and shut me up
with some Christianese, I would rather just not be honest with you. It is not
helpful to try to “encourage” someone with an over-used Bible verse. There may
be truth in it, but friends, sometimes the hurting can’t see through their
tears enough to grasp the truth in some Bible verse that has been used to keep
them quiet in the past. It may have been encouraging to you when you went through
your struggle, but the only thing that always helps is love. Love listens,
allows the pain to be there, and lets itself get uncomfortable. Love brings a
meal when they aren’t sure if the people they are giving it to even want it,
love leaves a gift card in the mailbox, love asks how people are doing not in
passing, but sits and waits with every intention of listening for the real
answer. Love says with its gestures and heart, it’s okay to tell me the truth, I want to help you carry this burden.
Love keeps calling and keeps emailing just to check in even though they don’t
get a response and are afraid they may be pestering, but love doesn’t need
anything in return anyway. Love brings a box of diapers or groceries without
even asking, love gives of its time and its comfort and lets go of the fear of
rejection. Love realizes that it’s better to annoy a hurting person by
relentlessly being there to help than to let itself off the hook by saying well it’s been a year, they’re probably doing
ok.
I am part of a group called Greifshare and I go once a week
to gather with other people experiencing loss, and we talk through our pain
together. This post was actually inspired not just by my own experiences but by
listening to the pain of the precious people in my group. Sometimes the primary
pain, the loss, seems secondary to the pain of going through it alone. Of being
expected to get over it, to move on, or to be happy. Of being spoken to like a
child, of being forgotten, of feeling the frustration that they should be over
it by now but they are nowhere close. Of their faith being judged because they
are sad and have been for months, because healing is slow.
It doesn’t matter how insignificant you feel that your pain
is compared to others. Maybe your uncle died years ago and you still feel waves
of hurt and loss, and you know people are judging you because he was just your uncle, right? Or you are still
keenly feeling the loss of a good job (it
was just a job, right?), or your grandmother who died (she was old, right?, or you have an unseen illness that affects you
daily (it’s just depression, right? Aren’t
there pills for that?), or a miscarriage (it was only 8 weeks, right?. People put down our pain, put our
pain in categories, to let themselves off the hook. But your pain is real and
deep and you may feel embarrassed or alone.
Well friends, feel
your feelings. Be sad, angry, frustrated. Yell and scream at God. He is
safe, He desires most of all your true heart and He knows it anyway, so go
ahead and hurt. Hurting is not wrong. Emotions are not sinful. Being sad is not
wrong and it does not mean that you do not trust God. The most damaging thing
someone can do to you is make you feel like you are doing something wrong by
hurting when you are in the midst of pain. Because now, not only do you have
the pain but you have the feeling of guilt because you can’t stop feeling the
pain. Or the worry. Or the fear. Try giving yourself the permission to walk in
your pain, walk through it hopefully, even if it takes a very long time. I am
sorry if people have tried to placate you with Christian sayings and various “comforting”
Bible verses without accompanying those with any real comfort. I know how that
is. In our world, and maybe it has always been this way, we are so accustomed
to plastering on a smile that we may not even know how to share our true hearts
with each other. Much less offer to help carry someone else’s very real burden.
But when the Bible says, “Do not fear” it does not mean IT’S
A SIN IF YOU FEAR, SO STOP IT ALREADY YOU’RE MAKING ME UNCOMFORTABLE. You know
what it means? It is God saying to you:
I’m here, and I am a
safe place.
It is permission to try letting it go.
A little at a time.
Over years maybe, a lifetime, but with the assurance that in
the empty space that comes when you are letting go of your pain, God will patch
your broken heart with love.
No rush.
