We've all had...

things in our lives or in the lives of people we love that are just so profoundly overwhelming we almost can't say them aloud. They can be good things or bad things. Like when my husband found out he was going to be a grandfather, he, perhaps unknowingly, whispered the words, "a grandpa" as he let them take hold and settle in and alter who he was. He has a new moniker, a new superlative for the shingle he hangs outside himself that attempts to describe all the things he is: son, brother, uncle, welder, dad, husband...grandpa. It's a beautiful moment when someone opens a welcomed gift life gives them. If you're the one giving that gift, it's even more lovely. It's like holding out your hands and showing them heaven. As life sometimes works, that of course means sometimes the hands open and what we see looks a little more like hell. 

I read a quote the day the hands opened and I found out my niece wasn't going to live. "We are all just walking each other home." -- Ram Dass. I don't even remember where I saw it. If it was you who posted it, thank you. I've run my fingers over that like a smooth stone dozens upon dozens of times since then. And not just about sad things and hard things, but I've come to see that walking each other home happens in the light and the dark.

I see us all headed in a general direction together on a wide expanse of hard-packed dirt road. Along the way, there are forks in that road. Sometimes those forks lead to gentle slopes with spectacular, breath-taking views. Sometimes they are dark and overgrown to almost impassable and you aren't sure where you will end up or if you'll find the way through. Both times we call out to our people, to the ones who walk with us and to the people who've taken those similar paths before us... "Come see this...it's beautiful" or "Come with me...I'm scared. I'm lonely. I'm grieving. I'm broken." 

The truth is, while I firmly believe we are all in this real life production together, we are all very much the main character in our own stories while being the supporting cast in everyone else's. And while we are all on the road together, walking each other home, no one else walks in our footsteps. We are all somewhat alone together. While that may sound disheartening, it shouldn't. Being alone together means that looking to the left or the right, you will find someone there and even if that person is scared, you still have someone to be scared with. Alone together is better than alone, alone.*

Think of it this way, if it's night and the power goes out and you can't see anything but dark, you would find comfort in knowing that one of your someones is in the dark with you. Maybe they aren't afraid of the dark. Maybe they have a better sense of space, a better memory of where things are so they can guide you around the chair leg that could surely break a pinky toe. Maybe they know exactly where the flashlight is. Maybe they will sit in the dark with you for as long as it takes for the light to return. Maybe you are the someone who isn't afraid, who knows how to navigate, who will share their light, who will sit until they can see again. Be that person. Be the sharer of the light. We need to be people who are as willing to help shoulder the burden or shout the good news as easily as we share the gossip and the scandal.

When someone is going through hell, we don't want to say the wrong thing. Maybe because we've had people say the exact wrong thing to us and felt it burn as it went into our ears and swam around our brain and slammed into our heart in a way that fueled the angry part of going through a hard patch. I think we all so much want to be the person who says the thing that heals the wound, and we just as much don't want to be the person who says the thing that makes the cut deeper.

I think back to the times I desperately searched people's faces and words to find the ones that made my hurt or fear or uncertainty lessen... "It is well with your soul. She's in your future now. You will find a way to carry this." Or the words that increased and confirmed my greatest joys... "You were born to do this. You are exactly where you were always meant to be. He's who your dad was talking about when he said you would find the very best man for you." I think back, and I so very much want to wrap those feelings of safety, optimism, hope, comfort, peace around my people, my fellow travelers. I want them to know their good and bad are seen and acknowledged and felt by me, because I want them to know I'm rejoicing when they do and mourning when they are. I want them, the ones sharing the road with me, to feel what I felt from others. That in their aloneness, (because no one else feels your exact joys or sorrows) I'm together with them. I'm either cheering for them or ready to carry with them.

I'm up in the middle of the night talking to you, because I'm thinking about the people who have walked with me. I'm hoping that they know I'm walking with them too, that we are walking with each other. My heart and my mind is heavy tonight, because I have a dear friend who has a family member who isn't well. I've typed and deleted the "not well" several times trying to find a softer way of saying it. Trying to find words that convey the enormity of the situation without dramatizing it. Trying to recognize the weight they carry without dwelling in the unknown. Trying to stand beside her in the certain hope that everything is going to be okay without silencing her need to say the scary things, so she can see them outside of her head and know that the fear isn't always the reality. When I see her, a lump forms in my throat. All the things I want to say, all the things I don't know how to say, all the silly and trite and unhelpful things, the platitudes that don't feel sincere but are the things everyone says when they don't know what the right thing to say is because there is no right thing. All of that sits in my throat. And she knows this because she's swallowed those kind of words for me too because she has never failed to walk toward home with me. I don't want to fail her.

The joys are easier. They are. Cheering, if you really love someone, is so natural it happens without effort. 

Hard stuff is, well, hard. It requires your best effort. If you really love someone, you stay with them through their hard stuff. You show up for it. You don't veer off the path and wait for them at the end. You just don't.* 

I guess the point of all of that is this, even when I am standing here with a lump in my throat that contains all the things I want to say, all the help I want to give, all the things I shouldn't say because they won't help, the point is...I am standing here. I am right here looking at your face and seeing your pain or sadness or fear.

And the moment you take a step, because you will take a step, it's inevitable, I will follow you even into the dark. I'll bring my light. I'll carry it because your hands are full. I'll run along side you even when we can't see where we are going. I'll go because you are. Because that's what love does. Love sometimes travels through hell to walk you home.

*I'm not talking about toxic or abusive relationships here. You know better than to think I am, I hope.