Reactions to Sadness: May 25 - 31

I rejoice in your promise like one who finds great spoil. Great peace have they who love your law, and nothing can make them stumble. 
Ps. 119:161&165

Sadness. It stacks up in our Facebook feeds. It sours our stomachs at parties when we expected to be enjoying a cheeseburger. It lurks in plastic smiles and in rooms filled with bridesmaid tulle and hairspray and makeup.

It’s the canvas our lives often seem to be painted on: Sadness. Loss. Abandonment. Disappointment. Some smudges of joy might be there too, some brushstrokes of bliss and laughter and contentment. But behind it all, don’t you feel there’s a permanently sad backdrop?

When bad news piles up, it’s easy to think this way. Families aren’t just broken, they’re completely shattered. Lives aren’t just lost, they’re taken. Sometimes, all the worst things happen at once, on every side, crowding into the edges of my own ordinary days. So when God gives me a happy toddler in a baby pool in the green grass in the shadow of a gorgeous home in the cool afternoon breeze, but gives someone else an obituary and an autopsy report or a pile of divorce paperwork and a custody battle, how should I respond?

My initial reaction is gratitude. “Thank you, Lord, for sparing me that burden.” But I once heard Larissa Murphy speak, and she cautioned against this type of thinking. When Larissa was in her early twenties, her boyfriend of ten months was injured in a car accident and left with a permanent brain injury that affected speech and motor control. His survival was a miracle, but he would never be physically the same and would need years of treatment and therapy. The couple had already been pursuing engagement, and they continued to feel that God was drawing them toward marriage. So in spite of the accident, they married four years later.

Larissa often hears from women who tell her things like “Thank you for sharing your story! You’ve made me so grateful for the life God’s blessed me with!” She’s not as encouraged by these comments as the grateful women expect her to be. “Don’t use my life as a comparison checkpoint to make you glad yours isn’t as hard as mine. How will you feel if God does call you to carry a burden like this?”

So, gratefulness is not a sturdy enough reply to the collapses of lives around me.

Perhaps a little more helpful is an attitude of compassion. Can I ever guess the wounds that are oozing under the masks people wear? I see only a tiny corner of each life that intersects with mine. I can’t know the sadnesses that keep him up at night or drive her to silently cry in a bathroom stall in the middle of the workday. Maybe there’s nothing I can do for a heart so wounded. But maybe the humility of a genuine kindness would soften the ache just a bit. Or even drain some of the sadness away.

Most of all, though, when sorrow licks at my heels or drips out of other lives into mine, my response should be fervent prayer. What’s sparing me from funeral plans or legal proceedings or watching somebody walk down the wrong aisle except the mercy of God? Do I have any chance of avoiding the breakdowns of life without His help? When broken hearts crack right in front of me, the only one who can stitch them up is the Lord. So I pray those hearts into His hands, the same place I put my own heart if I want any hope of keeping it whole.

Sad news will always come. It might even come all the way up to my own doorstep. So I’m humbled this week. I’m grateful. I’m moved to greater compassion. And I’m driven to my knees.

Grateful this week for: 
shade
a day off
reading the face of a friend, not needing words
Roku with Pete
strawberry pie
raspberry milkshake
AAA
a chance at a free roof (more on that later this week!)
garden cuttings for the table
honeysuckle in the air
slowly swelling grapes
new shelves in my pantry closet
porch swing