Pain

An interesting week.

Tuesday morning, I buried a 32 yr old single mom. She was in a single car accident and left behind a 14 year old orphan. Dad was never around. The daughter is well loved by her grandma with whom she and her mom have always lived and her aunt and uncle and their families. She's not without love ... but she doesn't have her mom's loving anymore. Extraordinarily sad!

Tuesday night, we got a call from our daughter that she had a massive infection in her leg that caused significant pain. (She's a toughie, so if it caused significant pain, it really, really hurt!). She went to the Urgent Care, had it lanced, dressed and infused with antibiotics and sent home. She's better, but still hurting. She's 600 miles away from us.

Thursday afternoon, I got a call from our son who has a friend who broke his arm badly in the middle of the night and so he went to that hospital straight from a hospital room where another friend's dad had a stroke. He went from caring for emotional pain to physical pain. He's 2,400 miles away.

The issue is that there is pain all around us, isn't there? It never stops. It never sleeps. It just keeps sharing it's infection.

But, isn't that why we have each other? Isn't that why we have the Church (caps intentional!). We can't hold our daughter when she's crying because of her leg pain. We can't hold our son when he's crying over his friend's pains. We can hold this newly orphaned girl as she cries and rants and rails over the injustice of never knowing her dad and now losing her mom. We can hold the ones close to us and hope that others are holding the ones close to our hearts, but not close to our bodies.

My friends ... step into other people's pain. It's our job. It's our duty. It's our honor. Step into it and share it. It may hurt YOU more, but it will lessen the impact on them. Do it. No whining. Do it.

Do it today.