This morning, if there were any way, any way at all that I could switch places with someone, or switch circumstances with someone, or change the way I feel with someone, I would do that in a heart beat. A big ol' thump of a heart beat.
I'm serious, I would. I'm absolutely, positively sure I would do that.
Is there any circumstance more horrific, more tragic, more painful that losing a child? This morning, earthquakes happen. This morning, children die. This morning, war goes on. This morning, we have to answer that which we can't.
I strongly suspect the is not, and furthermore, I strongly suspect I would not let want to find the answer to that question or even series of questions.
Sunday, in West Monroe, La., the berg most famous for duck, a 13-year-old was swimming as part of a youth group outing when a terrible tragic incident occurred.
I wished I could say something all pastorish here that would have great meaning and depth, something that would help those youngsters and their parents but truthfully, for one of the few times in my life, words simply fail me. Sometimes all we have is love.
The group apparently was trying to get out of Lake Bruin when the ladder on the pontoon boat they were using malfunctioned. Something about the lift mechanism caused some sort of shock to rip through the ladder. One teen was killed and several were severely injured, a couple still in critical condition as Sunday rolled roughly into Monday.
In the one book that addresses suffering and loss in scripture, the book of Job, we have this dialogue:
"Are God's comforts not enough for you, a word spoken gently with you? Why has your mind seized you, why have your eyes flashed, so that you return your breath to God and utter such words from your mouth? What are humans that they might be pure and those born of woman that they might be innocent? If he doesn't trust his holy ones and the heavens aren't pure in his eyes, how much less those who are abominable and corrupt, for they drink sin like water."
I could throw a million cliches at this, a million theological statements like sound producing chimes in a dust storm, but in the end I would simply be wrong in the effort and wrong in the execution, and they would not help the situation any more than gas thrown on a roaring fire would.
A pastor's daughter died, and there is nothing I could do or say that would make help here. Just nothing. It was a terrible, terrible, terrible tragedy. And tragedies do happen, still, even to pastor's families.
This morning, I feel pain, transfer pain, much like second-hand smoke that destroys families sometimes. I so wish I could say or do something that would help, but knowing God loved her (and I do know this and I suspect all of the family knows this), really doesn't divide the mustard at this particular moment. The family is hurting, the congregation is hurting, the school is hurting, and any and all who knew her is hurting.
The pain is real. It is there. It goes on, and will go on.
I do not know this pastor nor do I know the pastor's wife or the remainder of his family. I do not know the pain he is feeling, but ultimately I do know the God he loves dearly, and I know and believe that nothing can separate the family from the love of Christ. I stand on those words every bit as much as I stand on the bow of a great ship.
When my daughter's husband died after an automobile-motorcycle accident sevenish years ago, I didn't know what to say to her exactly. During the sermon, I looked into her big eyes and like swimming pools filled with brackish water, I could no longer swim there.
I had no card in my wallet with sentences I could latch on and say with a smart smile plaster on my face. I still don't. Time hasn't given me fresh, miraculous words, words on a beat up wallet-card, words that come from another dimension that are useful only at certain times, in certain places.
I think ultimately we aren't supposed to have smart words. We're supposed to have, well, honest ones, words that come from the heart, dipped in our own blood and our own experiences and our own pain. Words that suffer with us. Words that ae
But what I could do then, and perhaps now, is simply sit and let the moment play itself out, let the thoughts scramble as if they came from the brokenness that is my life, and the words drift like wood in a swollen stream. It was enough to allow the grief to stir the stream, the pain to push the drift. It was, really. Sometimes I believe the moment is enough, the raw and ever so honest emotion is enough, the time worth the tremendous effort to simply take the next breath.
Sometimes that's all we have, pastors or not. Sometimes God allows the moment to exist, and we simply are pieces on the board. Sometimes we just need to be still and know ...
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