2 Corinthians 1:3-4 “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God.”
I recently met with a group of moms who, like me, had suffered the traumatic loss of a child. We went around the circle and talked about the friends and family who had been there for us in our time of need, the people who had come alongside of us and who had been the hands and feet of our Lord Jesus Christ, the ones who had ministered to us just when we needed a word of encouragement or a nod from our Heavenly Father. Although all of the ladies were able to share at least one or two significant persons who reached out and touched them after their child died, each and every mom agreed that they were surprised with the people who didn’t show up for them. One of the most common themes I heard was that the person who ministered to them the most was someone completely unexpected, an individual who came out of nowhere and who seemed to just come into their lives at the very moment in time when they needed them the most. Interestingly, it was never a family member or someone whom they had been particularly close with before; it was typically someone who had been a peripheral acquaintance, or what I like to call a “fringe friend.” We all have them; these are the ladies who are not in the “inner circle” or “core sanctum” of our closest friends; they are the ones we may have known in the past or that we don’t really know especially well, but their presence at a desperate time in our lives made an eternal impact that we would forever be incredibly grateful for.
Proverbs 18:24 says, “One who has unreliable friends soon comes to ruin, but there is a Friend who sticks closer than a brother.” The one thread we all had in common was that even that new forever best friend fell short in areas that were untouchable, on days that there was no one who could understand, in moments of time where there were no words any other human being could utter that could remotely touch the deep sorrow and empty places of our soul and the longing in our hearts. What I have found in my own personal grief journey is that although my Heavenly Father brought amazing and wonderful people into my life who were that cold cup of water on a hot and thirsty day, there was only One who could actually be the most consistent Friend that I truly needed. There was a place I could go to and a Person I could meet with that actually became my closest companion and my forever Best Friend and I have learned not to be disappointed in the human beings I felt were really not there for me at a time when I needed them the most. If there is one thing I have learned in this passage of time, it is this -- people will always disappoint us, especially if we have expectations. Let me say this another way – there is no one, not one single person on the face of this planet who was meant to come alongside us and completely administer the healing and comfort that only comes from our Creator.
God does use every day normal people to come into our lives and who will make a difference at a time when darkness seems to shroud our life and when our hopes and dreams have been shattered. But it is only our Heavenly Father who truly knows exactly who we are, precisely what we are going through and who has the capability of understanding entirely what it is that we will need in order to be healed from our brokenness, from our pain, from our suffering, from our sorrow and from our grief. The beauty of our Savior comes when we cast our cares and burdens upon Him and it is then that His Holy Spirit transcends into the deep places of our soul with the comfort only our Lord Jesus Christ can provide. He alone accomplishes the amazing and extraordinarily powerful work of putting all the pieces of our broken lives back together and when our hope is restored, it is then we in turn can be that unexpected individual who is able to come alongside and comfort another human being with the comfort we ourselves have just received from our God.
I recently met with a group of moms who, like me, had suffered the traumatic loss of a child. We went around the circle and talked about the friends and family who had been there for us in our time of need, the people who had come alongside of us and who had been the hands and feet of our Lord Jesus Christ, the ones who had ministered to us just when we needed a word of encouragement or a nod from our Heavenly Father. Although all of the ladies were able to share at least one or two significant persons who reached out and touched them after their child died, each and every mom agreed that they were surprised with the people who didn’t show up for them. One of the most common themes I heard was that the person who ministered to them the most was someone completely unexpected, an individual who came out of nowhere and who seemed to just come into their lives at the very moment in time when they needed them the most. Interestingly, it was never a family member or someone whom they had been particularly close with before; it was typically someone who had been a peripheral acquaintance, or what I like to call a “fringe friend.” We all have them; these are the ladies who are not in the “inner circle” or “core sanctum” of our closest friends; they are the ones we may have known in the past or that we don’t really know especially well, but their presence at a desperate time in our lives made an eternal impact that we would forever be incredibly grateful for.
Proverbs 18:24 says, “One who has unreliable friends soon comes to ruin, but there is a Friend who sticks closer than a brother.” The one thread we all had in common was that even that new forever best friend fell short in areas that were untouchable, on days that there was no one who could understand, in moments of time where there were no words any other human being could utter that could remotely touch the deep sorrow and empty places of our soul and the longing in our hearts. What I have found in my own personal grief journey is that although my Heavenly Father brought amazing and wonderful people into my life who were that cold cup of water on a hot and thirsty day, there was only One who could actually be the most consistent Friend that I truly needed. There was a place I could go to and a Person I could meet with that actually became my closest companion and my forever Best Friend and I have learned not to be disappointed in the human beings I felt were really not there for me at a time when I needed them the most. If there is one thing I have learned in this passage of time, it is this -- people will always disappoint us, especially if we have expectations. Let me say this another way – there is no one, not one single person on the face of this planet who was meant to come alongside us and completely administer the healing and comfort that only comes from our Creator.
God does use every day normal people to come into our lives and who will make a difference at a time when darkness seems to shroud our life and when our hopes and dreams have been shattered. But it is only our Heavenly Father who truly knows exactly who we are, precisely what we are going through and who has the capability of understanding entirely what it is that we will need in order to be healed from our brokenness, from our pain, from our suffering, from our sorrow and from our grief. The beauty of our Savior comes when we cast our cares and burdens upon Him and it is then that His Holy Spirit transcends into the deep places of our soul with the comfort only our Lord Jesus Christ can provide. He alone accomplishes the amazing and extraordinarily powerful work of putting all the pieces of our broken lives back together and when our hope is restored, it is then we in turn can be that unexpected individual who is able to come alongside and comfort another human being with the comfort we ourselves have just received from our God.
