A blank screen.
A blinking cursor.
It’s not that I have no thoughts, it’s that I have too many.
How to sort them? Consider them?
It’s not that I have no feelings, it’s that I have too many.
How to untangle them? Resolve them?
I pray for the hurting.
I give to those in desperation.
I listen to the hard stories.
For those close to me, and those I do not know.
But it doesn’t feel like enough.
And yet, what else is there but to pray, give, and listen?
I have long said that the internet—and social media, in particular—has allowed us to experience more grief than we are meant to carry. The only one who can carry the grief of the whole world is God.
Yes, He tells us to enter into the grief of others, but we are at a unique point in history where all that we know—all the grief open for us to enter into—can literarly shut us down. Perhaps it is this, even more than just the pandemic, that has resulted in our current mental health crisis. We are all trying to carry too many loads.
I love this piece by my friend Kelly Matthews—I Don’t Want To Mourn. But I Must. I think she expressed this very condumdrum, and the reasons for it, so well.
Perhaps it all goes back to the airline oxygen mask analogy. Those who are secure in a moment must then care for those struggling in that same moment. To care with grace and compassion. To love with sincerity of words and with sympathetic tears. To be Jesus to one another in every situation. But I can’t do that if I’m carrying the grief of too many people. Then I am just as crippled as the one in need of comfort.
I can’t carry the grief of every situation in our country—let alone the world. But God can. So I will pray. I will look for ways to give, big and small. I will listen to those within my sphere who are walking through difficult seasons, weep with them, hold them close.
And while not ignoring things going on far from my daily sphere, I am trying not to let them consume me, so that I might be emotionally available for those who need me in the here and now.
Do you every get overwhelmed by all the grief in the world? How do you combat falling into other people’s trauma on a daily basis?