say something, do something

There are a lot of people just really hurting right now, aren't there.

Losses from the past 12 months all catch up hard at Christmas. Fearful things are pending for many in a time when the future feels so uncertain and bleak.  Our neighbor who lost his wife in March was feeling it extra at Christmas dinner last night. Our college friend who is a thread away from losing her husband is wrestling with a totally different kind of Christmas. Long-awaited and prayed for babies lost, never-expected cancer turning the world upside-down, unending painful patterns twisting deep in places like Haiti, in people like so many we know. 

Everyone says to be kind, and I think we're all trying.

But also.

Say something, do something.

Doesn't have to be the perfect thing. 

Think for two seconds about what you'd want someone to say or do for YOU in that kind of trainwreck, and do that. 

Awkward is ok. Choked up is ok. Not perfect is ok. No answers is ok. Not fixing, that's alright.

But the worst thing is to be utterly alone in it, and nothing feels more alone than silence. 

Get out there this Christmas with your family and think of three people you know are having trouble getting off the floor, and tell them you love them and are praying. Give them, bake them, take them, pass them anything, write them a psalm or a prayer (I strongly recommend any excerpt from Douglas McKelveys, Death, Grief and Hope.) Take their kids to the park for an hour or two, show up to quietly clean and fold laundry, order dinner, cut their grass, rake their leaves, have your kids make cards, text them from the store and ask what you can pick up. Be lovingly and humbly invasive. Join someone in a broken space where nothing is expected. 

Tell them you're hurting because they are hurting and that you won't stop praying for and with them...and remind them next week and the next that you haven't left them.

It will remind them that He hasn't, either. What a gift to give this Christmas.