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Coming alongside those hurting
I am sharing my experience here per request as a means to encourage and unite. I hope it is taken that way. This experience was one of great encouragement to me as we searched for a diagnosis for our daughter.
Over the last week I have been reminded that we cannot stay silent. As a white woman, I have to confess I have been hesitant to use my voice, not because I don’t cry, agonize and feel the pain ( I do). Not because I don’t want to see the next generation do better than we have (I do), not because I don’t think WE can do better (I do), but because, up until this point, I didn’t feel like I had a right to speak on the subject. As I drove my daughter downtown today, the freedom I have weighed heavy on me. I don’t worry about what might happen if I get pulled over on the highway. I don’t worry when my white son goes out with a group of friends on a Friday night, thinking he might be targeted because of his skin color. I don’t worry if my husband will be shot down as he goes for a jog. I have freedom from worry that many other mothers and wives do not have.
This past year was one of great angst because of our daughter’s newly diagnosed health issues. One day this past summer, while we were living in Panama City Beach, I went to pick up two of my three children from the beach. I was overcome with sorrow as I watched my kids playing and laughing in the waves, one giving the other a piggy back ride, kicking a soccer ball, enjoying one another. Tears poured from my eyes as I felt the absence of our child at home, unable to walk the sand and jump and run. I sobbed there on that sidewalk. And you know what happened? A young African American man came up behind me, put his arm around me, and asked if we could pray together. He didn’t know why I was crying. He didn’t know if we believed the same thing. He didn’t know how I would react to him. Those unknowns didn’t stop him from being the hands and feet of Jesus to me that day. His big arms wrapped around me and I felt as if he was God’s gift to me in that moment. I am so grateful for the mother who raised him. I am so grateful he did not just see me as a white person who would be afraid of him. I am so grateful he wasn’t so embittered because of existing racism that he just walked past me. He allowed God to use him to encourage and sustain me on one of my darkest days. I am so grateful for that unknown man and his mother (and the community) that raised him. I pray that I am raising my son the same way (as we all should)……to see someone’s pain and come alongside them with compassion, dignity and gentleness. “The King will reply, ‘truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’” Matthew 25:40
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