Love Is Not Letting Someone Go It Alone

I’m happy to report that Sara is out of surgery and in recovery at the moment. We received so many prayers, encouraging emails, and expressions of love from so many of you. Thank you so much. I spoke to her two surgeons and they both couldn’t be more pleased with how the process went and are hopeful that she will have a smooth recovery. She has to stay overnight in the hospital and gets to go home tomorrow morning! Yeah! I’m going to stay with her tonight because Sara’s family has a long-standing tradition that no one should have to spend the night alone in a hospital. I’m going to honor that tradition and hang out with my Babe! That should be fun since neither of us slept well last night——Sara because she was concerned about surgery, and me because Sara was concerned about surgery and didn’t want to be alone!

Love is not letting someone go through pain alone. I have been often blessed by that definition of love. It started back when I was going through a painful betrayal by a colleague in ministry. One of my best friends dropped out of the fellowship about that time, but suddenly reappeared as the process reached it’s most painful. When I asked him where he’d been, he told me he could see the handwriting on the wall and knew the conflict was coming. Having been through it himself he said he just couldn’t bear watching me go through it. “But you came back,” I said, “for the worst of it.”

“I know,” he answered. “As much as I couldn’t bear to watch you go through it, it was worse to think of you going through it alone.” So cool. That’s what come passion is: “to come to passion”, in the Old English sense——to rush into suffering to help alleviate the pain.

I’ve already hired to grandgirls to do dog-sitting for us tonight so Sara won’t worry about them either!