After a particularly trying day (because we all have them), I received a text message from someone I love with the statement, "So stressed."
How does one comfort another in the midst of their own discomfort? How does one act in selflessness when their own trials beg them to be selfish, just for the day?
You see, I believe that when we are most pressed with heavy burdens, we lean all the more into God's great peace and mercy. It is during these times that we greatly heed His voice and direction. It is in these moments that we realize how much we have failed to seek Him in the good, and how earnestly we need Him all the time. God guide our fickle flesh to wake up, remember the necessity, and actively pursue Him all the time. We humans are so forgetful, enclosed in our carnal bodies.
So, how did I comfort a loved one? The only real, genuine, and raw way that I could: by being vulnerable and speaking from a place of experience. By embracing the fact that God allows us to endure things so that we can help others endure them. Sometimes, our greatest strength is found in our weakest moments, because when we are weak HE is strong. Sometimes, we have to console and sooth when we are the ones that need to be consoled and soothed. We spend time with the Lord in our affliction, that we may bear the weight of others' afflictions upon our shoulders and help them carry their burdens. We are called to cast our every care upon the Lord so that we can take the cares of our brothers and sisters and cast them upon God alongside our own.
I told my loved one that, in my stressed and anxiety-ridden body, I found myself laying on the floor in desperation and just talking to my Lord. I reminded her to take time, pray, and take meditative breaths. I told her that amidst my prayer of humility, which was long overdue -- lying there on the floor -- I ended up falling asleep because it is in our desperation that we seek Him and He gives us rest. It is in our body's exhaustion that we can truly die to ourselves and live for the Lord. It is then that I truly remembered the biblical message: Whoever loves their life will lose it, but whoever hates their life for My sake will find it.
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