This is what other people go through . . .
This is what other people go through. These are other families’ struggles. You put them on a prayer list, and you fervently pray
. . . at least a few times. Well, maybe once. It’s an obligatory function of faithwalking. But urgency fades with the pressing in of life; alarm is absorbed in the myriad needs that crowd our days.
We don’t mean to be apathetic.
And after all . . . these are people outside our circle. These are other people’s parents, other people’s children, other people’s friends.
They are not as gifted as our own, not as thoroughly instructed, not as thoroughly graced.
This doesn’t happen to people who do things right—who make the sacrifices, who make the tough choices, who sow good seed. Does it?
What can relationship be without this reaching out in desperation—this frantic desire for a reversal of hell-breathed decisions?
How will we talk about meaningless things in a meaningful way, and all the while the heart hears scratching nails as on a chalkboard, blood pulsing in the ears?
Do we just give up . . . give in? Surrender?
Does surrender look like truce, abandonment, painful silences—with rock hard parameters placed around the talk that really matters? Or can surrender and warfare comingle?
Indwelling Spirit, left as our guide, our comfort, our power, I’m feeling hopeless here. I need Your presence, Your intrusion, pushing aside my tears and fear. I need You to sigh through me, pray through me, love through me. I need Your gleam of strong hope, because I am unable to conjure up any on my own.
It is easier when it is another’s loss.
