My Dearest,
I know that your day is dark. Your illness is proving incurable and your pain is chronic. Financial ruin is staring you and your family in the face. The season has turned harsh, your lover has betrayed your faithfulness, your longtime animal companion has died, and your heart grows heavy and your eyes dim with weary tears. War rages just outside your door and grips you by the soul as well.
I know all of this and yet I am thousands of miles from where you are. I can’t step over the threshold and take you in my arms and silently cry with you until the bitterness ebbs. It’s so far that I can’t just bring a basket of hot food and a bottle of wine to sustain you and slake your thirst. My words, even when I try to shape the letter that will ease your suffering one moment’s worth, are too small and sere and frail to make an inroad–and the letter will undoubtedly arrive too late. There is a faint echo in that digital delay when we speak on the phone, and all I can hear in it is our own choked breathing, no sounds of the deep solace really required.
All I can do is leave the gash in my own heart open and ask you to take up your residence in it. Know that my thoughts are reaching across the miles to you at every moment, awake and asleep. Let me shift some of the terrible burden from your shoulders to mine; I know it isn’t real, and doesn’t solve your troubles one small bit. But I hope that you can find some comfort and hope in my desire to carry you while you are too weak to carry yourself one small step further. All I can do is love you.
And so I do.
Art-Colored Glasses 
This is quite beautiful!
I know that in your role as a pastor you have seen and experienced this sort of thing many a time. It happens that at this moment there are many in my family and closest circle of friends undergoing this kind of trial and I ache to Do Something meaningful to help, but can’t–and mostly, am reminded that this is the ongoing state of being among the living: someone is *always* suffering, and too few of us feel able to do more than grieve with them. But in a world where hope and faith still hold true, we have to believe that our solidarity in their suffering *does* have some power, however little. Solace is not without strength.
We sometimes call it a ministry of accompaniment. Even with people in closer proximity the best we have to offer in the face of their suffering is our human presence and our unwillingness to abandon them. It isn’t really within our power to alleviate anyone’s suffering, but we can perhaps enter it with them or walk with them through it. That alone is a source of strength and encouragement.
Thanks again for a touching piece. Mark
Very good and comforting !
Thank you, Elly.
Very moving, very loving…
It’s for specific people and events, but as I told Mark (above), it’s kind of a universal longing too.
Oh, Kathryn, your words resonated so deeply with me, as I have just lost a long distance friend very suddenly and tragically, and there is little I can do for his family, left behind and experiencing much of the same difficulty as you have described here. I do believe that our hearts can reach out, even when physically there is little we can do, even to those we do not know … and do not know of. I love what Richard shared … ‘a ministry of accompaniment.’ I am sure your heartfelt words have sent out healing and love to those who need it most.
I do not doubt that you have found the words to offer your most generous and heartfelt comfort to your long distance friend’s survivors, too. You have such a gentle spirit and wide heart that I can’t help but think just knowing you’re thinking of them will bring them great consolation.
A beautiful piece, Kathryn, especially for those of us who live far from home.
Thank you, dear John.