Five Minute Friday: Lonely

 
"Carry each other's burdens . . . " Galatians 6:2

 We all have our own rankings of devastation and loss.

Losing a child, or losing part of a child due to a severe injury, was always at the top of my "pain and loss list."

I could never comprehend surviving that kind of pain.

Yet somehow from the beginning, I never wanted to consider my pain and loss greater than the pain and loss of others.

I've sat with friends while tears were running down their faces, and asked them to share their pain with me. But they would stoically shake their heads no saying what they were going through was nothing like mine. Because of their own personal ranking of pain, they thought to share their pain would lessen mine. That it would leave mine unrecognized and unacknowledged.

To each friend I've shared the same words, pain is pain.

When your heart is broken it doesn't really matter if it is broken in two. Or if it is broken into a thousand little pieces.

They both bleed.

We all need to stop ranking pain. Jesus certainly didn't. He met the needs of tired and weary fishermen by filling their nets.  He gave life back to a dead son when he heard the cries of a mourning mother.

When you don't share your stories of pain with others because they are hurting, you leave them alone in theirs.

And if there is anything that is worse than suffering a great loss, it is suffering it alone.

Given a word.

Writing your thoughts for five minutes.

Connecting with women from all around the world while reading their thoughts on the same word.

And that really is the best part of this whole thing!