Sitting at my dining room table, I was enjoying my cup of coffee, and the young woman across from me was beginning to relax, although she still seemed somewhat hesitant when I asked her about her miscarriage. Getting up to go into the kitchen, I was feeling God’s tug on my heart to be a little more open myself. I looked over my shoulder at her and quietly asked, “Did you know I lost a baby at full term?”
Her look of surprise allowed her to ask me a few questions and as I shared some of the struggle and the journey that had been mine, she began to unleash all the thoughts and emotions that she had been carefully guarding. As I listened, I realized she had been in an emotional and spiritual struggle with no one to really talk with and no one even who really gave recognition to the loss she had been through. Knowing I was empathetic with her struggle and wanting too some spiritual direction, she opened her heart as I silently thanked God that I had responded to His gentle, but insistent, tug.
Responding to the need of another when we can relate deeply because of our own hurts and disappointments can be difficult. The loss of a loved one, the failure of a marriage, the broken promises of a friend, personal limitations, the facts and consequences of living with alcoholism, abuse, or ridicule, or the tragedies and horrors of nature or man out of control – all of these are relived in their emptiness and searing pain when we feel the tears and the heartache of someone who in so many ways is “just like me.” The darkness of her soul wants to darken mine. It is then we need to remember the comfort God has given us. Remember His love and His gentleness. Remember the strength of His embrace, as we cried our own tears of confusion and sorrow. Remember His guidance and His sufficiency, and remember the sunshine He gave that in time dispelled the darkness. And in remembering, hold tightly to the hand and the heart of the one whose darkness is still surrounding her, and bring her to God’s arms of love and help her find the radiance of His sunshine. You will both be comforted. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction so that we will be able to comfort those who are in any affliction with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.
– Bev
(Related Bible reading: 2 Corinthians 1:3-7)
