The Crying Place

Sometimes you are enjoying life, and then your own mortality reaches out and slaps you in the face. That happened to me today. I heard from a friend about one of my cancer buddies in my lymphoma group. He is in remission from our variety of rare lymphoma, but is fighting for his life with other health issues. His wife and young daughter are frantic. I am seeing myself in his shoes, and my own family on edge. I couldn't go see him and his wife due to distance, but I reached out to my college friend who lives nearby, and she is going to see them. She is going to sit with his wife, and is bringing her some home-cooked food.

That's what we need sometimes. Someone just to sit with us. Tonight I went to my crying place. It is a beautiful area called Pigeon Point, in Beaufort South Carolina. It has picnic tables, and the best sunsets in town. That's where I go to cry-- and worship-- and to meet with God. I take my guitar with me, along with my Bible and journal. Sometimes, God gives me a new song while I am sitting there. The song on my heart tonight was written by Dennis Jernigan, for one of his friends who was dying of cancer. I blogged about it in the middle of my chemo, on the absolute worst day of my cancer journey. I had fallen in the salt marsh at work and was utterly spent from the exertion of crawling to safety. The chorus goes like this:

If I could just sit with you awhile

If you would just hold me

Nothing could touch me

Though I'm wounded,

though I die

If I could just sit with you awhile

I need you to hold me

Moment by moment,

While forever passes by.

[Sidebar: Everyone cries when they get a cancer diagnosis. Everyone. What I needed most from my wife was to be held. I still need that. Every day, I need her presence; holding me, accepting me. Just... being present.]

Tonight at my crying place, I opened at random to Jeremiah 32:24-26. In context, the city of Jerusalem was under siege by the Babylonian army, and there was no hope. Nobody was coming to save them. In the middle of this despair, God told Jeremiah to buy his cousin's field, pay for it in silver, and have it officially notarized according to the standard procedure. Jeremiah argues with God (shameful! I would never!) asking God "What's the point?"

" 'Oh, look at the siege ramps already set in place to take the city. Killing and starvation and disease are at our doorstep. The Babylonians are attacking! The Word you spoke is coming to pass-- it's daily news! And yet you, GOD, the Master, even though it is certain that the city will be turned over to the Babylonians, also told me, Buy the field. Pay for it in cash. And make sure there are witnesses.' "

Then GOD's Message came again to Jeremiah: "Stay alert! I am GOD, the God of everything living. Is there anything I can't do?"

God went on to assure him that while the city would, in fact, fall to the Babylonians, God would later return Jeremiah's people to this land, and would usher in a time of prosperity and normalcy. Jeremiah saw only doom, but God was giving him a glimpse of a much better future.

So maybe you are in despair right now. Find a crying place. Find a place to get alone with God and cry it out. Bring paper and write God a letter about it. Writing to God is therapeutic. Trust me. And then? Find someone to sit with. People are hurting everywhere. (It's not just you.) Find someone to sit with, and maybe just listen.

And then bring the problem back to God. "I am the God of everything living," God says. "Is there anything I can't do?"

Pigeon Point, Beaufort, SC. Photo courtesy of Tim Cox