The People Who Waited in Darkness Have Seen a Great Light

its not about the fixing of people at all. at least not in the way people have tried to fix me before. the strange pushing away of the abandonment or confusion or whatever the great deal of hurt is inside. because what if we, in the fixing, in the immediate reaction to a loss for words or fear or perhaps the sudden connection to our own deep hurt, do not allow our friends to grieve whatever it is that they are grieving. then we have not loved them as broken. not loved who they are in their great deal of hurt and who they will be once refined and bent by it. if we only try to fix and push and speak, we have only loved our hope of what they will be once they have mended. and we rarely, in our visions of our mended friends, take account of the scars that might be left or honor the different person who might altogether take the place of who they were before. to slow our fear of a changed friend or quicken the awkward silence of not knowing just what to say, we push them to be bright and shiny and new. but i have mended many things before and know the sweaters and the shoes always are a bit different after the mending. with more marks of care and more stories for the telling, but always a bit different. so. in our broken friends, i find a challenge of letting them grieve whatever it is they have lost, or never found, or found too often. of allowing their great deal of hurt not to make its home in them but at least to make its mark in its terribly important way. to allow the tragedy before the redemption. if i am to try anything at all, it is not to fix the hurting people so dear to me, but to love them greatly and directly in the middle of it all.

*photograph by marc davies, torment