Mourn with those...

It’s happening again. Right now. Right at this very second there is a mommy sitting or standing or heck if she’s like I was literally on her face on the floor of her child’s hospital room, begging. Four hours ago she wrote “the neurologist said his MRI looks bad.” My throat closed with agony as I read those words, as memory of that moment flooded my consciousness. It’s happening again, to another family.

It happens every day. Since Damon died I see death everywhere. I see pain. I see suffering. I can’t not see it. So many people are suffering. So many mommies and daddies have said goodbye to their children. What the crap?

The thing that sickens me today is the knowledge that this is not new. It seems that literally every single day I hear or read of someone who has lost a beloved. Someone who is deeply mourning, who is plunging into depths of despair that will only get deeper. I read these stories now, maybe because I want these people to have a voice. Even if they don’t know me I want to know that someone shares in their suffering. I want to know that someone is hurting with them, even if that person has to be me. But six months ago I absolutely refused to let this kind of pain in. If I heard of such horrific loss I shut it out as soon and as much as I possibly could. Oh heaven forbid…  I probably said all sorts of stupid crap too. If not to the person then to myself.

I am convicted and ashamed that I refused to “mourn with those who mourn.” Not to my core, not in the way I believe the verse was intended. Because if you mourn you know how deep it goes, how much it saturates, how words cannot express the pain. I am blessed to have a community who is genuinely trying to mourn with me. Would I have had the courage to mourn with you? I hope so but I honestly don’t know.

In a culture that is increasingly pleasure saturated I beg you to see. I couldn’t or wouldn’t see the agony. I had to be plunged into the middle of it. As odd as it sounds I believe with all of my heart that as Christians we are called to feel deep agony, not superficial pain with those who are in agony. Please let it in. Don’t let us mourn alone.