“To ease another’s heartache is to forget one’s own.” Abraham Lincoln spoke these words even as he endured a poverty-stricken upbringing, the loss of two sons, his wife’s grief, and the brokenness of a nation at war with itself. There is no better way to end 2020 than to make his words our own.
The world is hurting. 2020 has brought loss to each one of us, and while it has taken more than its fair share, it has left a gift of its own if we are wise enough to recognize it. It doesn’t come in glitzy paper, a sparkling bow, or designer bag. Think brown paper, corners coming untucked, a tear on the edge, and a smudged return address.
We live in a world where our natural self-focus is cultivated, encouraged even celebrated. We celebrate winners, CEOs, powerbrokers, players, and even pimps. The words that we would want used to describe us include successful, smart, spiritual, courageous, principled, powerful, charismatic among so many others. We shy away from weakness, vulnerability, anything that identifies our fallibility, dependence, or need because that’s not “the us” that we want people to see.
But hurting people do not want to be comforted by those who have not walked the same lonely road they are traveling. They do not want a lecture on self-sufficiency, pulling themselves up by their boot-straps, or the way they should handle grief. They do not want your projection of perfection as they look in a mirror and see the ravages of loss etched in the lines of their faces and the disarray of dirty hair and clothes. They know that brokenness does not make the top ten list of our beauty obsessed culture.
People who are hurting need people who have suffered. People who can share truth because they too have lost and yet somehow survived to face another day. People who have suffered know when to speak, when to listen, and when to merely be silent together on the front porch. They know that sometimes the food they bring fills the hole in the heart as much as the hole in the stomach. People who have suffered do not just come once and then disappear, they come again and again to make the journey easier and less alone. The relationship they build is a solid rock on which unsteady feet can take a stand.
No one wants to suffer. No one wants to lose a loved one or a job, a relationship, or a dream. But if you must, then use your suffering to ease the suffering of someone else. Accept the gift that 2020 has so humbly offered. Unwrap it. Embrace it. Share it. Weep openly. Laugh through the tears and meet a need for someone else. Whether for you that is listening to the unspoken words of a friend in grief, collecting food for a hungry family, bringing Christmas to an empty home, or speaking on behalf of those who cannot speak for themselves – it doesn’t matter. What matters is that you do not waste what has been given this year.
