I Couldn’t Let You Go Through This Alone

Since I am still recovering from a summer cold I had a good excuse to stay home by myself tonight while the rest of the family is at track practice. So I am catching up on some of my favorite web-sites. One of these sites is Lifestream. We met Wayne Jacobsen the author of the site a few years ago. Wayne occasionally puts out a newsletter and the following are some highlights from his latest.

"This may just be the essence of community: “I couldn’t let you go through this alone”....I don’t know a better definition for community. It isn’t always fun and games. Love will also not let people go through their darkest days alone. As painful as it may be to watch people we care about suffer, love won’t let us be anywhere else....

At my brother’s funeral a number of years ago one of his best friends stood up at his funeral and said that he couldn’t bear to visit my brother as he suffered the final stages of multiple sclerosis. He wanted to remember him as he was, not in his weakened condition. When he was needed the most he couldn’t bear to go. How sad!

The meaning of compassion is right in the word itself: “come to passion”. Passion in the old English meant suffering. Thus compassion means “to run to suffering”—to be there at the worst moment because someone we love needs us. I love that. A good picture of this are the 9/11 rescue workers who were running into the World Trade Center when everyone else was trying to run out. Compassion means being there when it’s incredibly difficult, not because we enjoy the circumstances, but because we love the person in them.

No one enjoys walking people through dark valleys or through painful reactions, but love says, I’ll be there for you. I may not know what to do or what to say. But I just can’t let you go through this alone!"

I know that loving isn't always easy and there is often a great cost. My prayer is that I and the rest of the the Church will be known as people who say and live " I can't let you go through this alone."