a woman's heart

Women are so different than men. Shocker, right? Recently, as dear family and friends were enduring tragic loss, I was learning the nature of a woman's heart.

It is a horrible thing to be away from home during times like these. You want to be there, surrounding people with your love, even if there is nothing you could ever say or do to help them feel "better" or whole again. I had wished that I could just stand in the same room with those who were suffering, so that they would know I was there if they needed me and that they were not alone. I suppose that seems very purposeless. Being away makes you feel so helpless. 

As I cried, I realized that the tears were for the family, not the deceased. Why cry for someone who is spending eternity in the glorious splendor of heaven? I cried for the children, who are fatherless. I cried for the wife who is now a widow. I cried for the major milestones that will be missed: walking daughters down the aisle on their wedding days, births of grand babies, birthdays, graduations. I cried as if it were my own father that had passed away. Why?! Why was I getting myself "all worked up" over something that wasn't even my reality? 

Answer: Because my heart is designed to bear burdens with the suffering. I am programmed by God's design to feel the grief and the hurt of my brothers and sisters. As the church, we are called to care for one another, and deal with each other in love. How can that work if we don't understand each other? Maybe this is God's way of showing women with empathy in their hearts how to care for the widows and orphans, by asking us to wonder how we'd like to be cared for in that situation and to feel a fraction of what they are feeling. Or maybe, God shows us pain so that we are never alone.

So perhaps I was "helping" from a distance by sharing in their sorrow and praying for them like I'd like to be prayed for? I don't know... 

This family has shown me what it means to praise God in the storm. When the trials come, and they will come, I pray that I'll have the courage to raise my hands to the sky as they did, and that sisters in Christ will have the courage to suffer alongside me, showing love through empathy. 

just so much sadness. what can we even do?

"Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn." -Romans 12:15