Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Sit

So Jon's oldest brother recently posted on facebook that he walked into a Chinese restaurant and asked a Chinese lady to be seated only to find out she didn't work there. Whoops! A couple years before that my sister- in-law put her hand on a woman's stomach and asked her when she was due only to find out she wasn't pregnant. Yeah, big whoops! The crazy part is the woman stood about 15 feet from her for the next 15 minutes and scouled at her. Yikes! How many times have we all done this. For me too many to count.
These are perfect strangers but how many times have we inserted our foot in our mouth with our dearest friends or family when it really matters.

I love facebook because my news feed is constantly going on about all the really amazing, life changing, inspiring things my friends are doing. Sometimes you feel like "Ok, what am I doing that is significant?!?" Mostly I just feel grateful to know so many really motivated people. But, I have too many friends, close friends, who are going through really really hard things. Life can be so challenging and overwhelming. Divorce, infertility, burying loved ones, miscarriages, adoption (amazing, but the process is brutal), losing jobs, this list could go on. In those moments that I am able to connect with these people are the moments where I don't just want to say the RIGHT thing. I want to say what my heart actually reflects but sometimes it doesn't come out right.

Recently, I was talking to a friend who is going through a divorce. I didn't know all the gory details but I know she has fought hard and tried to make her marriage work and it just isn't for so many reasons most which she cannot control. So she was telling me about renting a new place for just her and her boys and doing life a whole new way from what she is used too. My response " it is what it is" I know, super insensitive. I walked away going, really Lauren, THAT is what you came up with. What I meant and really wanted to convey was I know you have worked so hard to make it work, so many circumstances are out of your control, I don't think you gave up, I don't judge you in any way, you are doing what is so hard but necessary, I am so sorry you are hurting. You have done what you can. You are doing what you have too.

I didn't say all of that or any of that. I wish I did.

My brother's fiancĂ© recently had the 3rd anniversary of her brother's sudden death. I know that day is hard for her every year. But, honestly so is everyday in between. She is learning to do life without him on this earth. I know that hurts really bad,  it just plain sucks actually.

When it happened my brother called us late one night telling us he had passed at the age of twenty five and we were just devastated for my brother's fiancĂ© and her family. I kept picturing if I was in those shoes, what would I want people to say or do??? I didn't really know. I didn't want to screw it up because I feel like people can say really dumb things when people pass away. I have. I get it, you don't know what to say, neither do I.  I didn't want to say or do nothing though. I feel like that is just as bad.

I read a book right after he passed that I was going to give to his mom called Lament for a Son. One of my sister-in-law's gave it to me. I decided to read it first to see if it would be helpful to her in anyway. I sobbed the whole way through. The author writes a lament, a love-song really for his son who died in a climbing accident. So many parts of the book were helpful in gaining perspective but one quote stuck with me.

"But please: Don't say it's not really so bad. Because it is. Death is awful, demonic. If you think your task as comforter is to tell me that really, all things considered, it's not so bad, you do not sit with me in my grief but place yourself off in the distance away from me. Over there, you are of no help. What I need to hear from you is that you recognize how painful it is. I need to hear that you are with me in my desperation. To comfort me, you have to come close. Come sit beside me on my mourning bench."

It made me realize in all things not just the death of a son how pertinent this was. Death of marriage, death of career, just life's hardships in general.

 I don't want to come across as a distant uninterested observer because that is not what my heart feels. My heart is broken for you. So why do I fumble my words and come across as less than??

I remember my sister-in-law got news that my niece was having some health issues and she was scared. She didn't have answers and neither did  the doctors. I didn't have words. I just started crying with her and grabbed her. We were standing in the kitchen and we just hugged each other and cried. I felt in that moment, I responded exactly how my heart felt. I have no words of comfort for you and I will just be in this scary place with you. It felt real and honest and I wish I always responded with my heart.

"Your tears are salve on my wound, your silence is salt." Nicholas Wolterstorff, Lament for a Son