I have sat at the bedside of dying friends and wished I could simply make it all better. I wished I could come up with a cure, a solution, a miracle. I have thought to myself, if only I could relieve them of this burden.
It’s human to feel that way. In fact, I don’t think we would be very human at all without it. But we are so discomforted by our inability to control life that we sometimes miss the real purpose of our exposure to sorrow.
Our job in life is not to fix, heal, or mend someone else. It is just to accompany them on their journey. Make their burden lighter by encouraging how well they carry it. You can’t carry it for them anyway. Don’t bother.
Many have heard the term describing someone as having “the patience of Job.” This is a reference to the Old Testament narrative about a man who had everything taken from him by God in order to prove his piety. It was a test to see if he would give in to his misery and curse God. Job (pronounced jobe) was patient, I suppose, but not indefinitely. He, like all of even the most patient of humans, had his limits. Eventually, he too, succumbed to excessive complaint. He complained so loudly and so long, eventually God replied. If only to shut him up.
But at the zenith of his grief, earlier in the story, when things had become just as bad as they could possibly be, his friends showed up to share his sorrow with him. For seven days and nights they just sat with him, in silence. They didn’t try to fix him. They simply accompanied him in his grief. Like a pianist playing the music which best supports the melody yet manages not to overcome its truest purpose: to know the full depth of the song, for itself.
That’s a somewhat over-poetic way to say that we try too hard to fix everything and everyone. That’s not, and never has been our job. We only get in the way when we attempt it.
And like Job's friends, we too succumb to old templates for wondering about the purpose of sorrow in the world. Job’s friends concluded that since God is just, It would not punish anyone without reason. Job must have done something in order to deserve his punishment. But who is to say what defines punishment? Or what shall be concluded reasonable, for that matter? We don’t know what we don’t know. And telling someone they must have done something to deserve their suffering, is no way to be a friend.
Job’s story is an ancient parable reminding us that we cannot know the purpose of suffering, so we are therefore ultimately powerless to prevent it. It may be that suffering has a purpose still to be discovered. We shall not know.
Regardless, it is not the car we drive which matters. It is how well we drive it, is where we drive it, and the compassion with which we use it that brings forth new strength from hard times. Not just for others, but ourselves.
A good friend knows when to keep his mouth shut. Because there is no true answer for grief. And there doesn’t need to be. It just is what it is.
There is a caution here as well. Remember to stay in your lane. You don’t have the power to re-order the way of things. But you do have the power to soothe. You have the power to be present. You have the gift of embrace. Use it to heal others without conditions on the outcome and the healing shall be yours as well.
We so often have a tendency to want to make the world conform to our expectations. We fuss and struggle to stem the tide of things we may never understand. We sometimes go so far as to become co-dependent upon those who make a hobby of perpetuating drama in their lives. They seek a constant source of comfort and we are fulfilled by their great need for us. That is a pitfall of mindless service to others. We can do better.
Don’t seek to resist sorrow or dis-ease. It cannot be resisted. Seek to comfort those who struggle in the simplest ways possible, by simply being present. It will be less of a burden on your own heart, and give you the power to continue to love and support those who need a hand to hold the most.
A blessing is not an automatic miracle, it is a gift of potential. Give of it freely.
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