I’ve had all sorts of emergencies in my life. I’ve needed and wanted different things at all sorts of times during each incident. I’m incredibly blessed to have one friend who is a trained, glorious pianist, and there have been times when I’ve wanted her to play some soul-wrenching, Beethoven inspired piece to accompany the disaster, burning down to ashes. When I needed to tell someone about how much I loved my Grandma Jo, and how her glasses slipped down her nose. There have been times when my deepest, most sincere heart’s wish is for someone to come to my fire hauling a vitamin water. And an extinguisher. With a song, playing on a boombox to add a little extra flourish to the proceedings. One night I wanted someone to come close, sit beside me, and watch the ashes of old love letters floating up to meet the stars.
It's been two years - this month - since my marriage ended, people have approached me to say they wish they’d done things differently. I’ve approached people to apologize for not doing something, even if it was “I have no idea what to say – I’m just so sorry this has happened.” I have to wonder sometimes if with so much perfection and Pinterest we deter ourselves from doing a tiny something because it’s not more… well, significant, and for a lack of a better word- amazing.
My friends didn’t offer to fix anything. They gave me no promises, no scriptural recourse or plans. They were Christlike, as when Christ – just minutes from raising Lazarus from death - mourned with those that mourned. To bear one another’s burdens that they may be light. I'm not asked or expected to take all the pain and flames away – just to lighten the burden, to sit together, in the burn. Just to be there; in the ash, within the heat, amid the life burning down.
Thank you for braving the heat, to be with me in the fires of life. You have done something for me, which reminded me that I was loved, thought of, not forgotten or abandoned in the flames...what do you wish I would bring to YOUR fire?
Experience has helped in my own determination to not be “right outside”, but to brave the heat, bring something, or even play the piano, if that’s what someone needs of me.
