A Matter Of Time

I listen to her story, this friend of mine who grieves big. Such unthinkable hard she is walking through, trudging really. I listen intently, she has a gaping wound to share, a bleeding heart and I have nothing to give but myself in these moments. She mourns for a brother who was fatally shot at his home. Only eight minutes after he confirmed church and breakfast with his parents on the phone. Why? He had asked this neighbor to drive slower down their street. Disbelief passes across her features as she speaks the words, eight minutes she says, just eight minutes after he spoke to his parents he was gone.

What can we do with our lives in eight minutes?

I leave the gym, turn on the wipers, bow my head against the cool steering wheel. I think about loss, how only moments earlier I had swiped my own tears away while stretching on the gym floor. Our beloved dog put to rest this week and the missing him washes over us. Please God, please massage the sad in our hearts. And I sit in the car and think about my friend and how five months later she weeps, eyes glisten grief for the brother now gone.

Later I walk to the mail box and glance at the neighbors tree. And I remember to count again, yes in the midst of this sorrow the orange-tinged dancing leaves, they wink hope, and I see, I see. Thank you. I see the beauty right here in front of me. These are a few of my favorite things and I thank you. Opening a beige colored envelope I see the animals on the front of a card. The message inside is written in ink, a missive of sympathy from our vet. A kindness he says, it was a kindness to let him go. My eyes well once again as they have all week and I think of my friend and her brother shot so senselessly. Missing is hard life and time will heal but you have to catch up to the time. 

In eight minutes I can write a card to someone who needs a touch, a kind word to lift the the weary spirit. Drop it in the mailbox at the curb.

In eight minutes I can stop my busyness, cross the street, chat with an elderly neighbor.

I pray for my friend and her family, for the loss and the hurting that might never end.

And in eight minutes I can thank Him over and over again, for that wellspring of restoring hope that never ever truly ends.