I heard her say she can’t even look at them because it makes her uncomfortable. I nod, because I get it. “Don’t look and it won’t hurt.” They’ve been feeding us that line since we were knee high in line for vaccinations.

All this came just a few days after I asked Josh why it all hurt so much. How can I be in ministry if I’m the one falling apart?  And how do you stop dying right along with them? How do you stop letting their cancer eat you up too? Why is it so hard to move on after a friend moves past you? I know I can’t be the only one asking these questions. Maybe you aren’t right now but you have or will.

I was reading an old post by Ann Voskamp. She said, “Turns out—those who bear the weight of suffering will bear the weight of glory.”

Who dreams their life will fall apart in Rib Crib? I don’t know what boulder was crushing her. I have no idea what the man sitting across from her saying he didn’t mean to hurt her had done, but you can bet there is ALWAYS a consequence for sin and it’s usually others that take the brunt of that blow.

I tried not to look. Honest I did. I stared down at my magazine. No matter where my eyes were, my mind and heart were on her. “Don’t look and it won’t hurt.” That wasn’t working for anyone that day.

Eve, Did all this flash through your mind as you were chewing on death? The consequences we’d bleed from?

I have no idea what was suffocating that poor woman gasping for air between quivers muffled by her tissue. I am sure of the answer though. He makes the blind to see. And yes, we were all blind. That was the cost of that produce Eve. Blindness. The answer is the only one who ever gave sight.

Seeing hurts. It’s Uncomfortable. It’s human nature to turn away from the gruesome. We cringe at the hard; the ugly. We pull the cover over our heads at the scary. You feel plumb helpless when you can’t lift the crushing boulders of cancer, death, broken hearts… Sure we’ve all tried only to land the weight of it all square on our own shoulders.

Josh speaks it from the pulpit. “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this shall all men know you are my disciples, if you have love one to another.” John 13:34-35 The epiphany hits. When you are one of His they will know you by the way you love and you can’t stop breaking for the whole wide world. Eyesight was just the bonus gift to the real gift of salvation. If you have Jesus you just can’t help but see. You’ve just got to look! It is the only way we can know how to meet their needs; the only way to know how to love them well. It’s the way we can stoop down beside them to help carry the weight of it to Jesus.

Yeah Ann, it finally clicked. “It turns out that the ones who can bear the weight of suffering will bear the weight of glory.”