No words.

Someone once said to me that the world seems to be the biggest insulter once tragedy has happened in your life. As your reality begins to alter and shift, the world continues to move on. Life moves on. The people around you move on. It's like you've dropped everything within your hands in the middle of a bus station, papers and belongings flying everywhere and going off into directions before you can even process what's happening. Falling to your knees to pick up whats in front of you and to catch your breath as some papers fly away or your chapstick rolls away under stranger's feet rushing to make it to whatever destination. And in that place, that posture, you realize that you can't even begin to pick up and reorganize what's in front of you. Pieces are missing, ripped, broken, or gone forever and as you look up hardly anyone seems to notice, because they are is just as much of a rush as you were moments ago.

A good friend of mine recently experienced the loss of his mother recently. It's amazing that even in mourning the loss of someone else's loved one we make a situation center around ourselves. We think of those we need to reconnect with, those we need to apologize to, and that life is short so we need to get living before it's too late. When all the while, we are planning to move onto our next destination, because our lives continue on. That is the great insult: that life continues on. It barely pauses or even slows down to acknowledge that a small part of you is now gone, and that a 45-minute memorial service could never do justice to honor the life of such an amazing woman.

We are strange, selfish, and wondrous creatures with a heart for others so long as it doesn't make us abandon ourselves. If the greatest insult is for life to continue on in these moments, then the greatest compliment would be for us to do just that: abandon ourselves to be whatever is needed for those around us. But our flesh is weak, and we need a greater strength.

There isn't a solution to this. We will never have the right words, but I think that's an even greater insult. For us to think that we are the one's to truly bring peace to another person. For me to think that I have the right words to heal someone else is absurd. I have the comforting words from my God, that is all. Nothing I came up with or could ever fathom would bring as much peace as that.

We don't always need a solution for someone experiencing loss.
To love is to rid yourself of your ego and in that moment choose that person over yourself.

Lord, let me have the strength and humility to love like this.