Sitting in Sadness

Have you ever just run out of words?

In the last few weeks, my wife has been in a low energy cycle. She is just out of energy and needs more rest. This is frustrating to her because she wants to up and moving and contributing to life. As the frustration grows its harder to move and contribute and get up. But talking is not the thing that seems to help. There really isn't a whole lot to say. Have you ever been in that place where you're kinda stuck but you don't have anything to say, because everything to say is just the same stuff over and over and over again.

In Job 2 his friends show up and when they see him they realize there is nothing to say. So they sit down in the dust and dirt with Job and that's all they do. They just sit there for 7 days. From the way the rest of this book goes, I think this is probably the best thing they actually did. Sometimes the best thing we can do in the midst of such suffering is just be there for people. Just be there.

This is called the power of presence. Something is passed on between two people just by being together. Sitting there in silence holding a hand looking across the room or the dust pile. Somehow there is solace in silence and presence.

I'm not sure what else to say really. I remember the night I found out one of my students had fallen out of a tree and there was a good chance he wasn't going to walk again. I went to the hospital that night and I just stayed. The student was in surgery, but it didn't look good. I didn't have anything amazing to say, I am not really a man of many words to start with. But I stayed there with the dad and we cried and we waited. I still have a sketch I made during a church service a couple of weeks later. Its a small half sheet of paper suck to my office fridge with a magnet. It is a picture in blue ink of a boy rising out of a wheel chair with a basket ball sailing through the air towards the hoop.

I had another moment just yesterday when I stopped and paused in silence to look at the picture and pray as I have done throughout the years for the day when Brad will walk again.

If there is someone in deep suffering near you today, just show up, just be there. You don't have to speak you only need to be present.