Burdens…

If you do what I do, people tell you their stories.  Their stories sometimes amaze me, sometimes humble me, and sometimes, their stories break my heart.

A few weeks ago, a man with all his hair and a flat stomach told me a year ago he attempted suicide.  On the outside, he looked so put together.  He was better now, he said, but the darkness still crept up on him.

A man I respect broke down weeping as he talked to me because his wife went to the doctor and heard the word “cancer.”  I always thought this man was the tough type; his tears surprised me.  “I don’t know what I would do without her,” he sobbed. 

I was out walking the dogs and a couple I know drove by.  They stopped and we chatted.  Before I knew it, they were telling me their worries about one of their children and that child’s sexual orientation.  They were struggling: how did they reconcile their faith and the love they had for their child?

A friend of mine, whose skin color happens to be a different color than mine, told me how he worries about his grandson, who just got his driver’s license.  “I’ve told him if he gets stopped to be polite and do what the officer says, but what if something goes wrong?” he says.  “I just don’t know what I would do if I had to bury my grandson because someone else made a mistake.” 

I got an email from a man who read something I wrote.  He told me his story, how both his sons ended their life by suicide.  The heaviness in his heart was in every word.  He told me some days were better than others, but most days were still hard.

It has been over 50 years since she opened the door to the Army officer who brought her news that her son was killed in action in Vietnam.  She’s a small woman, quiet.  Most people don’t know how she mourns the loss of her only child, who died at nineteen, in a flawed war. 

She was weeping on the couch in my office.  Her husband had left her for a younger woman.  She stammered over and over, “What am I going to do?”  She wasn’t talking about raising her kids alone or making ends meet.  She was talking about the dam-busting flood of emotions swirling in her soul.

We passed each other in the hall and I asked, “How are you?”  She said, “Not too good.”  That’s a cue to stop and listen.  Then she told me she had miscarried earlier in the week.  It wasn’t the first time.  “Why can’t I keep a baby?  What’s wrong with me?”

I hear stories like these again and again.  Sometimes I wish I possessed a magic powder that would take away the pain.  I wish I could speak magic words and their burdens could be lifted. Despite what you may have read in Harry Potter, magic isn’t real. 

What I can do is what Jesus did: I can be with them.  When one of Jesus’ friends, Lazarus died, Jesus made the journey to be with his sisters.  Yes, he did the miracle of raising Lazarus from the dead, but before he did that, he let them know he understood their burdens.  He listened to them.  He wept with them.  He was there.  Isn’t that what we need to do?  We don’t need to give answers.  We need to offer help.  Listen.  Be there.

Every person I know carries a burden.  They may not talk about it, or talk about it to you, but it is there.  Before we rush to condemn anyone, we ought to pause and remember they carry a burden.  I’m pretty sure the world would be a better place if we could be selfless enough to remember people carry a heavy load.  Maybe we would gossip less.  Maybe our posts on Facebook wouldn’t be so vicious. 

Peter, one of Jesus’ closest friends, carried burdens.  He betrayed his friend.  He too often said the wrong thing at the wrong time.  In his old age, he wrote these beautiful words, “Cast all your cares upon Him, for He cares for you.”  Peter had discovered that his friend Jesus was there to help him carry his burden.

Whatever burden you carry; Jesus invites you to put the burden on his strong back.  He cares for you, cares enough to carry your burden.

From the Deep…

I had to walk into a room and tell a young wife she was now a widow.  It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done, to bring news changing someone’s life forever.  She sobbed and sobbed.  I wanted there to be words that would stop her pain, but there were none.

I stood beside a son who just got word his Dad didn’t make through surgery.  The son couldn’t even cry; he just shook.  I put my arm around him, trying to absorb some of his grief.  I knew his dad had been his rock, his hero, and his guide.  Now the son was on his own, alone, for the first time in his life.

I thought it would be another counseling appointment.  Instead, the husband confessed to an affair.  His wife buried her face in her hands.  He hung his head and studied the tips of his shoes.   How long do you let someone cry when they’ve just found out their best friend has betrayed them?

I sat with parents, trying to plan the funeral of their teen-age child.  All that came out of their mouths were jumbled memories and anger at God.   They were in a nightmare zone, where nothing seemed real and everything seemed too real.

Here’s what I’ve learned from thirty-five years as a pastor: No one gets a pass from the deep pain of life.  No one.  A moment when there are no words, a moment when everything you counted on disappears, a moment when your reality is forever changed comes to every person.

In that deep moment of pain, your soul is hard-wired to cry out.  Your cry may be literal, or you may shift to a kind of soul autopilot.   In my own moments of loss, I find myself living on two planes: a surface plane of saying and doing the “right” things; and a deeper plane, where a slow-motion earthquake is underway.  It usually takes me years to understand everything shaken out of place by the earthquake.

Somewhere in the upheaval, our souls cry out to God, usually with the question, “Why?  Why did you let this happen?  Why didn’t you stop it, God?  Why are you letting endure such pain?”  I’ve heard people who declare there is no God ask the God they don’t believe in “Why?”

There is a strange and hard teaching in the Bible, played out again and again, especially in Psalms and in the book of Job.  God welcomes your questions.  He welcomes your anger.  God wants you to pour the deep pain of your heart to him.  What God does not, however, provide the answers you want.  This is the strange and hard part.  Job asks God “why” and God shows up, talks to him over four chapters, and never answers his question.  David and other writers of the Psalms ask “why,” then declare they will put their hope in God, even though he doesn’t answer their question.

Jesus on the cross cried out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”  Jesus knew God’s plan.  He told his disciples the answer to the “why” three times: “The Son of Man must go to Jerusalem to be crucified and then raised on the third day.”  Still his soul in the depths cried out “why.” 

After all these years, and plenty of “whys” myself, I still see through the glass darkly.  I don’t understand all the tragedy that happens or why it happens.  I can tell you on a small scale I’ve experienced what Job did, what the writers of the Psalms did – moments from the deep.  I cried out to God from my depths and poured out all my emotions to him.  In that moment of vulnerability, of standing before God, telling him about my pain, I was real.  Something about pain makes us drop pretense. We get real with ourselves and with God.

In the realness of those moments, something holy happens.  God comforts me.  The pain eases.  I remember that my God loves me and holds me.  I can’t diagram it.  I can’t find the words for it.  I can just tell you it happens.  In the moments when there are no words, there is God.  Being in his presence is enough. 

There’s no way to avoid the deep pain.  You either have faced it or you will.  There is, however, a way to prepare.  You can be on intimate terms with your Heavenly Father.  He will hear your cry.  He will hold your soul.  He will bring the peace you need.