"It Is Well"

I just came back from tea break. It was extra long because I got into a conversation. My friend had just returned from a conference on member care, and they had learned how emotions have to come before cognition. “You’re being over emotional right now!” Is something I’ve heard once or twice in my life! Either someone has said it to me, or I’ve said it to myself over and over again to where I was ashamed of tears that flowed out of witnessing injustice, the pain of another, hopelessness I see in others or my own sin hurting my loved ones. When my friend shared over a cup of hot Lipton that emotions must come before we can mentally process something, and that is healthy, a wave of understanding came over me.

I saw a naked body lying in the street. My husband, driving for the first time in months swerved around him as I gasped, “I think that’s a body!” We parked and called the guards of a nearby hotel. The rain dampened my dress and ran into my eyes as we walked back to where I thought I had seen the figure in the headlights of the car. “Here he is, I said matter of factly.” Then upon seeing the open gushing wound in his head exclaimed, “Oh, Lord!” A moan and slight movement came from the body as though he were resonating with my cry to my Father. “He’s alive!” I knew he probably wouldn’t be for long, and I desperately wanted to do something to help him. I didn’t dare touch him, afraid that his attackers who had stripped him, cut his back with a knife, and left him unclothed at the bottom of a large bend in the sloping road would jump out and get me. I was afraid that he would somehow turn on me, or that I would be seen as part of his tragic death if I touched him. So I rushed with Zach to get the police. When we returned the boy was dead, his soul had left his injured body and gone…where? What was his name? Where was his mother? I wanted to cry, to scream, to see justice, to hold him instead of stand around looking at him with the others. I had no time to grieve life of this boy known by God, loved.

I had a busy day ahead, a youth event was to commence the next day in Kiceland. So, we went home. However, last night I was going to catch a 3-wheeled vehicle on that same road, and fear filled me. I didn’t want to pass that way alone. Four weeks later, I still wish I had cared for his soul in those last moments. Sung to him, recited Scripture into his heart as he passed into eternity. I hadn’t allowed the emotions to wash over me…I had made a cognitive decision to move on.

“It is well” is a common phrase here. People speak it to each other when a baby is born and no breath is found in his body, when a child dies in a fire, when a single is missing his loved ones in a far away state, when a youth minister takes the hurling stones of fanatics instead of his group members standing outside a church. Is it well? I sometimes want to shout at someone who says, “I’m fine” when pain is screaming at me through their eyes and say, “Stop it! You are not fine, and that is OK. Jesus is in control, yes, but he is also feeling your pain. So you can feel it too."

We need wisdom to help people to grieve, and rejoice as they need to. It looks different in this culture. We need to extend that same grace to each other and to every member of Christ's body. That he may declare over them, "It is Well."