Last week my counseling supervisor handed me a copy of Nancy Guthrie’s book, What Grieving People Wish You Knew. It was intended to aid me in walking alongside a client. After a quick skim of the book I ordered my own copy—it’s a book we could all use on our bookshelf to refer to as needed. What I didn’t expect was to need it just a few days later after a friend’s husband and the father of one of our son’s close friends since first grade passed.
In the book, Guthrie talks about things to say that bring comfort and things that stir more pain. She talks about figuring out what to do that is helpful without taxing the grief-stricken with one more decision. And she talks about showing up, not something we always do well for those grieving because we don’t know what to say or do.
But this week I saw a group of 19-year-old college freshmen boys show up without reservation, without over-thinking what to say or even knowing what they would say when they arrived. They left their college campuses mid-week and drove to be with their friend on the hardest day of his life, and then a few days later they did it again to be at the funeral.
They may have fumbled over their words, but their presence communicated more than any words in that moment ever could. As a mom who has watched these boys grow into young men, a mix of overwhelming pride and sadness welled up within me. These young men shouldn’t have to watch their friend lose his dad. They shouldn’t have to sit at lunch in suits after looking on from the pews as their friend followed behind his dad’s casket. Yet things are not as we wish, so we must learn to suffer alongside, to show up.
As my husband and I headed back home to Texas, the song on his playlists that never leaves me dry-eyed played–
Kenny Chesney
And it hit me. Most of these boys played football together through their high school senior year. Last year hearing that song undid me because football was over for us. This time I teared up because football was so much more than a game or a season. Football was the conduit that bonded these boys as brothers long after the Friday Night lights dimmed. What I saw this week was “I had your back on the field” and now “I’ve got your back in the game of life.”
Being with their buddy was a beautiful display of God’s embodied presence. A picture that left me so very grateful and weepy for the ways I see God’s goodness and faithfulness through my friends and other people showing up for one another. God gave us one another and we need each other—at times as the giver and at times as the receiver.
