I am so different from God, and so are you. We think we can't use things that are broken. But God prefers not to use things until they are. He uses broken soil to give crops; broken clouds to give rain; broken eggs to give life; broken cocoons to give flight; broken grain to give bread; broken bread to give strength. It was a broken alabaster box that gave fragrant perfume to anoint the Son of God; it was the broken Son that bought salvation for the people of God. He makes it better and beautiful through brokenness.

(~Andy McQuitty, Irving Bible Church)

I didn't expect the loneliness of suffering. 

In all the preparations and appointments and conversations, that part never came up. And yet that part proved equally as powerful and unmanageble as the pain itself. 

It's not that friends and family members don't try to share in it. They do— bless them—asking questions and spending long hours listening and attempting to understand. 

But I've learned that no matter the hours and days and weeks I invest trying to explain the complexities and consuming loss, I can find no words equal to the task. Try as they might to understand, a witness to a hard journey can't know what it's like to actually walk it. It's like looking at photographs of a marathon and believing you know what it feels like to actually run it. 

Instead, from a place of relative distance, the well-intentioned simply see the miracle of life that is you. They see how suffering could've swallowed you whole. And how, somehow, it didn't. For that reason, they don't see reason to mourn; they see cause for celebration. 

Still, for the person who suffers, for the one who endured the unthinkable, grief requires a reckoning. The only way to arrive at honest celebration is to, simultaneously, allow yourself honest lamentation. Those who suffer will tell you without hesitation: To live beyond loss comes at steep, steep cost. 

Someone recently asked me, "What's the hardest thing for you right now?" 

It didn't take me long to answer. 

"The choice I make every day to wake up and live." 

Yes, there is a deep loneliness in suffering. Whether it's a terminal disease, a chronic illness, the loss of a child, or the irreparable severing of a relationship, suffering brings with it an "otherness." Perhaps that is both the burden and the gift. For in this lonely place we learn how to keep company with others who find themselves there. 

For that reason, in this social media world of buffered realities, tonight the truth needed to be said. It's easy to assume that life comes back once the crisis is past. But please know this: 

Life never comes back. Never. New life can grow, and I already see evidence of that fact. But new life can only grow as it is watered by grief's tears. 

If you know someone who suffers, will you please sit with them in it? Don't try to rush them past their grief and into the safety of your celebration. There is no formula, no math that works in a place of loss. Six months, two years, a decade. For each one the timeline proves different. But to give a griever the grace of your patience and space? That might, in fact, be the sweetest gift of all.

And for my friend who suffers tonight in loneliness, this post is mostly for you. I have no cliches or platitudes or inspirational quotes. You and I both know better than that. I simply want you to know this: 

I see you. And I'm with you. As long as it takes.

(~Michelle Cushatt)

I always think incipent miracles surround us, waiting only to see if our faith is strong enough. We won't have to understand it; it will just work, like a beating heart, like love. Really, no matter how frightened and discouraged I may become about the future, I look forward to it. In spite of everything I see all around me every day, I have a shaky assurance that everything will turn out fine. I don't think I'm the only one. Why else would the phrase "everything's all right" ease a deep and troubled place in so many of us? We just don't know, we never know so much, yet we have such faith. We hold our hands over our hurts and lean forward, full of yearning and forgiveness. It is how we keep on, this kind of hope. 

(~Elizabeth Berg, Talk Before Sleep) 

My hands are over my hurting heart, I'm leaning forward and keeping on. His hope. It anchors us.

Pain is temporary. It may last a minute, or an hour, or a day, or a year, but eventually it will subside and something else will take its place. If I quit, however, it lasts forever. 

(~Lance Armstrong)

Autumn Fires

There is a harmony

In autumn, and a lustre in its sky,

Which through the summer is not heard or seen,

As if it could not be, as if it had not been!

(~Percy Bysshe Shelley) 

Our lives are at once ordinary and mythical. We live and die, age beautifully or full of wrinkles. We wake in the morning, buy yellow cheese, and hope we have enough money to pay for it. At the same instant we have these magnificent hearts that pump through all sorrow and all winters we are alive on the earth. We are important and our lives are important, magnificent really, and their details are worthy to be recorded.

(~Natalie Goldberg, Writing Down the Bones)

"People are just as wonderful as sunsets if I can let them be... when I look at a sunset, I don't find myself saying, "Soften the orange a bit on the right hand corner..." I don't try to control a sunset. I watch with awe as it unfolds." 

(~Carl Rogers)

Just feeling thankful today as I watch the lives of those around me unfold.