Good morning…
This morning, I have no idea why my computer returned itself to emails from this very same week five years ago. Back then, a subscriber to our everyday blog had sent me the photo above from her back yard in Florida. In retrospect, now I realize I felt much like the silhouette of this lone little tree trying to make sense of our mammoth, multi-faceted God.
The life of my good friend’s husband was stolen by suicide that week, filling my inbox with unanswerable questions, and another close friend was resting in her nest at home following a successful surgery to remove a tumor her doctor called “Charles Manson in second grade.”
“People I love are in excruciating pain, mentally, physically, spiritually, and when people I love hurt, I hurt too,” I wrote in a blog post that week. “That is why I have a solidarity headache.”
“I could try to close off, numb the pain, feel nothing,” I wrestled with options. “I could try to back up and back out, isolating, self-protected. I could be sucked down into their dark vortex, but how could I be of help lost in another person’s painful pit? Instead I choose to appreciate the gifts born out of my solidarity headache. Feeling deeply for my friends is a mutual blessing, a mutual blessing sparking gut-wrenching prayer.”
“Yesterday, I was reminded of why I take the risk of loving with my whole heart,” my old words remembered. “My morning was filled with the simple pleasure of walking in the sunshine and talking over tea with another special friend valiantly fighting brain cancer. Intimate time with her gives me the courage to live up close and open hearted, gracefully growing in peace with life’s joy and life’s sorrow, slowing down to listen to the painful purpose of my solidarity headache.”
Little children (believers, dear ones), let us not love [merely in theory] with word or with tongue [giving lip service to compassion], but in action and in truth [in practice and in sincerity, because practical acts of love are more than words] (1 John 3:18, AMP).
I am grateful for this unexpected reminder to love deeply each day, year after year.
…Sue…
