Grief. Loss.

This is how it feels when people ask: How are you doing?
What do you say, when someone tells you this? What do they WANT you to say?

Nothing. Because this is how it is. This is grief. We Christians live in parallel universes. We have wonderful hope in Jesus, hope that transcends reality, the grittiness and ugliness of a broken, damaged world. Hope that is real.

But we live - oh, how we live - in this broken, damaged world. We experience grief in all its nastiness and sorrow.

I thought of trying to untangle the threads for my friend. As if just concentrating on ONE of them - on anger, or abandonment, or even apathy - would make it more manageable, like an untangled ball of wool.

I thought of things I could say that could be helpful.

I thought...

But it wouldn't help.

In the end, I just said 'Yes'. I hear your sorrow and pain and grief. I hear that it is as messy as a tangle of threads. I hear that there seems to be no end to anything.

I listened. I gave. I gave the gift of Being Listened To.

I hope it helped.