How Do I Celebrate My Hurt?

As the post Thanksgiving food, family laughs, and being off of work for a couple of days waned, the 1st of December came! I am someone who is a mixed bag of highs and lows when it comes to the end of the year. I am excited with a child-like anticipation knowing that December brings 4 of my kids birthdays, the arrival of my parents coming to celebrate the goodness of God, and being in reflective mode as the year ends. The lows are realizing that there were opportunities that were misused, abused, and just down right missed. In addition to that, it is knowing that there were some things that were lost in the proverbial fire of life. Last week, I suffered the lost of a dear friend that totally changed the scope of my outlook. It was like the initial hurt of slamming your finger in the car door. Or getting up in the middle of the night to use the restroom and hitting your toe on the corner of the bed. It was an initial shock, followed by a touch of anger, and then tears of realizing that I wouldn't see my friend and brother in this natural state known as life.

Like me, he was a husband, a father, a dude just trying to always find the time to hang out with friends, looking to see what the next opportunity was for increasing the funds in his account, listening to his heart for where he needed to put his efforts, and oh yeah...a follower of Christ. I hadn't felt that feeling of shock and sickness since September 11th. I was lost! I was totally out of sync for the next couple of days. It was a moment of searching for the words to answer the question that was resonating in my spirit...where do we go from here? How do I explain this to my children? Should I call my wife who was at work? How do I comfort my friend who was on the other end of the phone? It was a moment of being perplexed, yet having clarity knowing that I was instantly hurt. It was a moment of being angry, yet realizing that this is what I preach about every Sunday. It was a moment of knowing that this is God's ultimate conclusion to life, yet being disappointed that He didn't check in with me first.

As I have been processing ever since the day I got the call about my friend. I started to wonder, how do I celebrate the birthdays of my children, knowing that his children will not get to celebrate their birthdays with him. I started to wonder, how do I celebrate the pending arrival of my parents, when his children will not get that opportunity again. I was wondering how do I celebrate this Christmas season, when one of the gifts that I had will be missing known as our friendship. Well, as I sit here typing this blog, I don't know. I don't have the answer to the question of celebrating in my hurt. I just know that the Maze featuring Frankie Beverly song "Joy and Pain" keeps coming to mind....'joy and pain is like sunshine and rain.........where there is a flower, there is the sun and the rain....it is wonderful because they are both one in the same'. So for me that is the answer, we celebrate in our hurt knowing that ultimately just like we are down today, tomorrow is coming. Today the hurt of losing a friend is like an all-consuming fire. But tomorrow I will rise from the fire, celebrating that it didn't burn me. It is knowing that no matter how much it hurt when I fell off of my bike, my mom was inside waiting to comfort me.

There is something that is innate in the human spirit that allows us to move forward despite being hurt by relationships, rejection, and death. We have this ability to mourn over the lost of a loved one, but laugh at the inside jokes that we created. We have the ability to fall into tears of hurt knowing that we will not see our friend, but can smile remembering different conversations we had. I often say that God created us with a defect. He created us with this void that can't be filled by materialism or consumerism. It is a void in us that only God can fill with his love for us. So, when we have those moments when we are feeling the hurt from being rejected, hurt from being disappointed with your life choices, hurt about the lack of opportunities, or hurt by knowing that a person that you love dearly has come to the end of their life....those are the times that the void or space that has been empty is filled with the presence of God. We celebrate knowing that the hurt will subside and the memories will still exist. We celebrate that there was something that we got from the experience or relationship that will propel us into the next level of our purpose. We celebrate the life that we have, with all of the good and bad, realizing that this journey is not being traveled alone. Just like when you hit your toe or slam your finger, the hurt will decrease...yeah a scare might be left behind, but it don't hurt like it did before.

I miss my friend! He touched my life and the lives of my family in a special way. But I celebrate that I had the opportunity to share his world while he was here. His life was about service and giving to others. Now it is time for me to serve more and to live a life poured out. It is a moment for celebration knowing that our lives are not lived in vain, but they are lived for the glory of the One that created us. I will move forward living like Paul, in the midst of my hurt, knowing that there is something on the other side that I can celebrate. Yeah, I know the answer to how do I celebrate in my hurt....like my friend I live while I still have the opportunity!

Hope

Thanksgiving is considered the time of the year where we reflect on what has taken place over the last 10 1/2 months. It is the time of year where you celebrate with family, friends, and as a community with the ties that bind. At this time of the year, with all that has taken place…from the election, to the police shooting of unarmed black and brown, to ISIS, to white supremacy/white nationalist still being prevalent, to the disenfranchised still being pimped for the sake of the one percent….it can be hard to be thankful. Our nation is divided across political party lines, cultural lines, economic lines, social lines, and religious lines. When we look at our lives today, it is hard to be thankful. It is hard to be thankful when most of us are living paycheck to paycheck. It is hard to be thankful when young people are graduating from college, but find it hard to secure a job in their major field. It is hard to be thankful when the future White House is not looking as diverse as the nation it is planning to govern. It is hard to be thankful when our children are dying in their own communities. It is hard to be thankful when we are still fighting some of the same issues that are grandparents had to fight. It is hard to be thankful on the surface, but at the deeper level it is hope that must be our focus.

Thanksgiving is what are sight is wanting to see, but it is hope that resonates in the vision of our hearts. Our hope is what allows us to see that not all things are bad. Our hope is what keeps us getting out of the bed each morning expecting today to be better than yesterday. Our hope is, as I paraphrase what Paul wrote in Romans 5, we look at the positive in the incubator of our suffering. In knowing that, it will manifest in us the endurance to “keep on keeping on” as my grandmother would often tell me. It is that endurance that gives birth to the core of who we are, which is our character. And it is that character, that enables us to keep hope alive in our hearts and our minds. Those among us that have difficulty celebrating this time of year, either due to circumstances, loss of a loved one, or just not feeling all that Thanksgiving has been promoted to be, I want to offer you this hope.

I saw an acronym the other day that said that hope means, hold on, pain ends. At some point pain does end, but if we give up then we will never know the beautiful tapestry that hope brings through the process. As a kid, my parents and I would go on road trips to different parts of the country. It was always cool when my dad, would drive because I could ride “shotgun” and be his navigator. I liked it until we would get to an area that had bad weather. It would scare me how dark the sky would get and how hard the rain would hit against the car. I remember my dad telling me one time, we had come too far to turn around, that we had to keep going until we found a break in the weather. Someone reading this needs to keep going, until you find a break in your personal storm. That break in your personal storm is where you will find that hope. Desmond Tutu once stated, “Hope is being able to see that there is light despite all of the darkness”. In this season of giving thanks, find your hope and then give thanks!