A physician friend I admire, Dr. K. H., was recently struggling with grief and shock after a beloved relative died. Late one night, she wrote about her pain, then shared her thoughts with many of her colleagues. Her message blessed and helped me to recall important themes that we all know but need to talk about often. They include…
Life is hard. Plato and others have been credited with the saying, “Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.” In truth, everyone you meet is either in the middle of a hard battle, headed into one, or just coming out of one. Often, all three. We may hide behind our smiles and nice clothes, but life is hard. Let us be gentle with everyone today.
Pain is the price we pay for loving. When we love someone deeply, losing them is traumatic and devastating. We are blessed for having their love, and choosing not to love is no way to live. Jesus encouraged us love and to grieve. He said, “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.”
We need each other. The Bible says, “Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep.” A well-known Swedish proverb says, “Shared joy is double joy; shared sorrow is half a sorrow.” It helps us to share our grief with others so that they can grieve with us. When someone shares their pain with us, we feel closer to them, and they model for us how to process and talk about our own struggles.
When you share what helps you, you help others. Because Dr. H. shared a song that helps her, the beauty and song of Jane Marczewski (Nightbirde) is now a part of my life, and I can share it with others. Ms. Marczewski’s song is beautiful, as was the exchange she had with America’s Got Talent panelists before she sang it. You can watch them shift from thinking that this was another contestant who wanted to become a singer to realizing that this was a very sick young woman, about to sing a song she wrote about her life and living with cancer. Radiating joy and a smile that the panelists did not understand, Ms. Marczewski said, “It’s important that everyone know that I’m so much more than the bad things that happened to me.” And, “You can’t wait until life isn’t hard anymore before you decide to be happy.” Here is a link to the event that Dr. Hernandez shared:
Our stories never end. Our stories are part of countless stories that came before ours, and they live on in the stories of many others after we are gone.
We are blessed to have each other and to be able to walk together on a shared road during this season of our lives.
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