Immense Pain

Five words on the page. “I am in immense pain.” On the outside, my friend looks normal and her friends might think she’s “doing so well!” But as a fellow traveler on the pathway of grief, I know she is almost empty, choosing to walk by faith, to do the next thing, trying to create a home of peace and joy for her children, wrestling hard against the feelings of despair, loneliness, and the hopelessness that threaten to take her down.  Her friends are holding on to the joy that she shared just yesterday, not realizing how quickly the undercurrent of anguish rushes in to pull her out into a sea of sorrow.

Those who have never walked this way cannot understand the enormous emotional, physical, and spiritual energy it takes to just face a new day, knowing that the grief we feel will never be completely resolved.  And frankly, we don’t want you to know how it feels.  We do not wish our sorrow on anyone else.  But strength to hang on flows through the whisper of a friend, “I see Jesus in you, the hard work of grief that you are doing so that your children can be children and have a mommy who is choosing life is worth the fight.  I’m praying.”

On those days that Chuck and I felt as though we were falling back down into the endless abyss of grief, Chuck would sometimes say, “I wonder if people have stopped praying.  I am so weak. I don’t think I can make it through this hour, let alone this day.”  If I was having a better day than him, I would send out a prayer SOS, asking faithful prayer warriors to hold up our arms, to remember to pray, that the battle was fierce and we couldn’t fight on our own.  If I was in the same abyss, we hoped that God’s people would obey His nudge to pray for us. I’m not speaking of weeks or months after Mark’s death, but years.  The grief journey is long and just below the surface of the smiles on your grief-stricken friends’ faces is a churning, angry river of sorrow that they are struggling to keep within the shores of their souls. 

Who needs you to pray for them right now, to send a note, a scripture?  Don’t know what to say?  Something like this, “God has reminded me to pray for you today. I am praying that you will know He is near to the broken-hearted and that He will never leave you without help and hope.”  Your obedience to the command to encourage makes you a messenger of God Himself.  In that moment you are His promise keeper. Do you know how loved I feel by Him when I realize He whispered my name in your ears?

Ask God for the words that your friend needs.  You may learn that the words you used to send help and hope were the exact words of her own cries to Him or even written in her personal journal.  Trust God to use you as a channel of His compassion.

I will always be grateful to those who prayed and continue to pray for us, to experience strength upon strength.  For those who encouraged me, when my skin was gray and my eyes hollow, that they saw Jesus in me, just because I got up in the morning, or sat in church and cried the whole service, when I had nothing to offer them, when I felt completely and totally helpless.  They celebrated every inch forward. Your friend needs you today.  Be that friend who doesn’t forget.

In His grip,

Sharon