Beauty in the Broken Pieces

09/02/2015

Photo by Anna Merrell Photography and Design

I was dropping Boone off to be boarded, the woman said my necklace was beautiful. My heart leaped.

“Thank you, it would have been my baby’s birth stone.” I said, proudly.

Her eyes widened, I may have imagined it but I am almost certain she took a step back. “Oh, wow.”

There is something in our nature that backs away from other’s pain. We try to take a step back. We try to gloss over it with cliches and promises of a better tomorrow. Our love for one another seeks to make others feel better. 

When I say we, I mean we. I am guilty. I did it this week to a close friend. She was sharing her feelings regarding a really tough matter in her life and I rode in on my white horse with an alternative explanation for her future. I was slapped in the face with what I had done when I heard my own oh-so frequently used “I know.”

The truth of the matter is, most people feeling loss know the truth. And if they don’t, spewing it at them during this dark time will not convince them of it.

We need to get comfortable with the darkness in order to get close to people experiencing it. We want to save people by bringing them hope: 

It gets better. 

God is control. 

You feel this now, but you won’t later. 

It will all come together. 

It will happen.

Lean on God.

In my darkest hours, I knew these things were true. But in order for me to bring my emotions to God, I had to experience it.

I want to be there for people experiencing darkness so they don’t have to experience it alone. In order to do that, I have to be comfortable enough to sit and experience it as well; to resist my desire to try and make it better. I can’t make it better anyways.

My best friend gets it.

Leah laid with me for hours in that dark guest room. Since we were little, her soul has always been quiet and it has grown so graceful. The only thing she said to me was, “I want you to say whatever you want or need to.” 

Sometimes I spoke and she listened. 

Sometimes I stared into oblivion. 

Sometimes I cried, and she cried too. 

It could not have been comfortable in that room; witnessing one of the people you love most so hurt and broken and small. Leah didn’t come that day with distractions, promises of a better tomorrow, or to cheer me up. She came to literally lay in the darkness with me, to share the weight of my pain, and mourn my baby with me.  She was the greatest example of Jesus.

He too, lay with me. He watched me suffer and did not seek to rescue me from it. I said terrible things to Him and He did not correct me. He let me bring every emotion to Him. He held me when I wanted Him least. 

He goes into the darkness with us.

It is my prayer that we all might learn to share the pain of others; to not take a step back from it or rescue them with hope, but to experience it together; that we might find beauty in the broken pieces.