I sat down to write something today, but then the doorbell rang. It was a delivery for my family of an edible bouquet. Seriously, is there anything better than something beautiful and also edible that comes as a total surprise from people who love you? So here I sit with tears about the sweet ways my friends have stepped up and loved my family well and instead of whatever it was I thought I might write today, this is what I want to tell you about.
My family has been through a tough time the last few months which culminated in some heartbreak about a week ago. The story isn’t just mine to tell, so I’m sorry for how cryptic this seems. I will say it involved intense advocacy on the part of our family (daily, for months) on behalf of a child and on behalf of one of our children, but ultimately things didn’t go the way we had hoped. We’re grieving for all the ways we can’t protect our kids. And yet, I’ve felt like I don’t have a right to grieve.
I put this shame on myself– I know the system, I should know better than to be hurt by it. I shouldn’t have let my heart get invested. Maybe I shouldn’t even have done the work I did since in the end it didn’t matter for my child. I never should have let anyone in on what we were doing, what our hopes were, what we were fighting for. Then my grief would all be quiet and tucked away in my heart and while it would be eating me from the inside, I wouldn’t have to deal with this thing that feels shameful to me. I failed. I failed my child. I was humiliated by a system that doesn’t value what I have to offer. I was hurt by people I trusted to value my family and my input.
As I’ve dealt with my own feelings of shame, guilt, failure and loss, my friends have spoken the exact opposite messages to me. They have validated this pain. They have told me my work matters. They’ve said I’m a good mom and that my child will be proud of me. They have grieved for me and with me and have never tried to put a band-aid on this. They made me get out of the house and they understood if I didn’t pick up the phone. They let me talk and they accepted my silence. They prayed for me and with me and for my children by name.
They have stepped in with practical support. An unexpected meal for our family. Flowers. Childcare. Taco lunch together. Offers of wine and candy. It has been beautiful to see my kids process this support. They have asked questions and answered them themselves. Why did she bring us dinner? Because this has been hard. Because they love us. This is exactly what I want my kids to know and understand about what friendship looks like, what the love of Jesus looks like in action.
I can’t tell you what a gift this is. As someone who struggles to fully experience my emotions, this validation of my grief has allowed me to actually experience my grief. Sometimes Thinkers need Feelers to show them the way. We need the feelers to teacher us how to create space for our grief. We need friends to voice their own pain for us. We need them to thank us for taking risks in the name of love. When we see the pain in your eyes, it tells us it’s okay to feel it ourselves. When you send us a message that validates how difficult this is, we take a deep breath and feel normal for how much we’re struggling. Your words really do matter. They help.
I wish for this level of support for every foster parent. Do you know how painful this world can be? And can you imagine the things foster parents tell themselves in the depths of their grief in the middle of the night? “I knew this was coming, so I shouldn’t feel like this. Nobody wants to hear about my pain because they told me this was going to be hard. The only reason this hurts is because I got too invested. It’s my own fault.” While my current circumstances are different, that pain is the same– the “I should have known better” grief. It is inexpressibly meaningful to have friends who stare that grief in the face and stand between you and the shame and say, “You did the right thing to love. You did the right thing to risk. This pain is what love sometimes feels like.”
If you know a friend is walking through a hard time, can you give space for her grief? Can you let her know you’re grieving with her? Can you remind her that grief doesn’t mean she did something wrong, but may mean she invested, she risked, she loved? To the mother grieving a break in her relationship with her child, the woman grieving a miscarriage, the job loss, the rejection by your own family, the infertility diagnosis, the marriage pain, the loneliness, the diagnosis that breaks your heart. When our friends are doing everything they can to be strong, can we give them the space to be weak? Can we be the herd that surrounds our vulnerable member and protects her from the prying eyes and judgement of the world? Can we let her feel what she needs to feel without explanation or defense? Just for a minute.
In the midst of the struggle before the pain, my brother sent me a link to a beautiful Sara Groves song, Floodplain. It’s a song for all of us that love and risk and fight and lose and weep. As each of us spend our own season on that floodplain, risking the grief that threatens to take us under and wash us away, we need our community, our friends, our family, our church to step in and step up.
I’m so thankful for the ways we’ve been loved– ways that allow us to grieve and heal. I’m learning so much, both about how I need to grieve well and about how to be a good friend. This grief business does not come naturally to me, but I have had loving and patient teachers.This friend business does not come naturally to me, but I have had loving and patient teachers. I want to learn from them even as I’m still wrestling through it all. There’s no happy ending today, but there is an edible bouquet sitting on my counter that tastes like love. And that helps.
2 Comments
Leave a reply →