Faithful Paradox

When Ezra was first diagnosed, a good friend of ours was asked to do a bit of training for our church on how to best care for us. On the first Sunday after Ezra fell ill, our friend shared some on best and helpful practices when walking with someone going through a season of suffering. Some of it was from his own experience, as he and his family are no strangers to suffering. Some was from what he had studied and read. While these thoughts are not my own, they were extremely helpful to consider for me, our family and for others.

Our friend shared that when one is in the midst of suffering, consider the picture of a target. The one who is suffering is at the center of the target, with each concentric circle going out being another layer of relationship based on nearness. In our case, Ezra was at the very center of the target. The next layer would have been his immediate family; Vince, me, Ezra’s brothers. The next layer may have been close friends, select other family members, etc.

The encouragement was given to consider where you might find yourself in that circle. Where might you be on the layers of circles? If you were uncertain where you were located, then quite certainly you were further out than you might think. Regardless of where you think you might be, it is quite positive that you were not in layers one, two or three.

Once it was determined where you might find yourself on that target, the encouragement was given to make sure that any time you felt you needed to process the grief and sadness you were experiencing about Ezra’s illness, make sure it was communicated to someone that was on a similar ring of the circle or one that was that was further out than you were. Never point your communication towards the center of the circle.

In my case, it meant that any time I was working through any grief or sadness, I did not talk to Ezra about my grief. When I was grieving the fact that life as I knew it was dramatically changed, that although there was no other place I would choose to be than at the hospital with Ezra, it was still so much loss in other areas of my life – that communication went to Vince, to my friends on other layers, but not to Ezra. When I wondered if Ezra was losing his battle with cancer, that communication pointed away from Ezra. When fear overwhelmed me, that communication went outwards, not to Ezra. It meant that my close friends used their energy to comfort and care for me, but the grief they were experiencing as they watched me suffer, as they watched Ezra suffer, pointed away from me. I never truly understood how hard it was for my closest friend to experience our suffering until after we lost Ezra and one day she briefly shared how difficult it had been for her. She did well to point her own pain and suffering away from me when I was in the midst of so much suffering.

Grief is complicated and hard, in part, because we all feel the pain of suffering differently. There were people who followed along, having never met Ezra nor us, reading every post we ever wrote who shared that they wept bitterly, as if they had lost their own child, when we lost Ezra. There were friends of ours and Ezra’s that felt deeply invested who have felt the loss in a very personal way. There were family members, near and far who walked alongside us and felt the suffering very acutely. There were church members who knew us as a family in the church, but not intimately, who grieved with and for us. The relationships could go on and on. But every person who had some sort of investment in our story felt the pain of it and grieved differently.

Grief is complicated and hard because there is a very fine line between pouring out compassion and empathy and asking the one who is suffering to take on and carry a portion of your own grief. There were times that I crossed the line with Ezra. There were times in which my own grief would overwhelm me as I watched Ezra suffer and he was in the place of feeling like he had to comfort me and carry my pain as his mother. There were times in which we would get together with friends or family and their grief would bleed onto us and we were left feeling like we had to comfort them and carry the weight of their grief on top of carrying our own.

Being in ministry, we are hardwired to walk with people who are suffering. It felt like a complicated and difficult thing to navigate our own grief and walk with others, when their grief was caused by our own suffering. We reached a point that any time a meal was delivered, we simply asked that people drop it on the porch and we did not interact with them. We did this, in part, because most times we received a meal, people wanted to care for us. They wanted to hear the most recent updates. They wanted to pray with us and cry with us. These are all good, beautiful, God-honoring things. And yet we found that with every interaction, we were left more exhausted. In part, this was because inadvertently, when people were caring for us, they were also unknowingly sharing their own grief with us. We often ended up feeling like we were left trying to comfort those who were grieving. The fine line of pointing all communication outward was blurred.

There were also those who simply missed the mark altogether. There were some who wanted to get together and talk because they were hurting and grieving and they wanted to be near us. There were some who likened their grief and the loss of Ezra to our own pain, feeling as if the loss they experienced was as great as our own. These were particularly difficult to navigate in a gracious way. There were those who seemed to think that talking about how sad they were, how much loss they were experiencing was a way to connect with us when in all reality, it felt more like they were unknowingly asking us to carry a portion of their grief that we simply did not have the strength or bandwidth to carry.

When navigating grief, the lines of communication will get blurry and difficult. It is inevitable that at times, communication will get messy. It is best to pour out compassion, empathy, sympathy, kindness, mercy and care. As you do this, however, be as mindful as you can to make sure that your care does not end up asking the one who suffers to also carry the weight of your own grief. Make every effort to point communication about the loss and suffering you are experiencing away from the center of the target. Try to ensure that you are not adding to the load of suffering the person at the center of the target is already carrying. It is a difficult and delicate balance, but one worthy of pursuit.