It was just another Friday…
Some of us were having trouble getting started at work because we had big, Saturday plans.
The “end of the week” memes were coming out of the social media woodwork.
I spouted my typical, Friday line: “No matter how awful today is, and no matter how many angry people you talk to, it’s still Friday, and nothing can take that away!”
Meanwhile, almost 800 miles northeast, some dear friends were going through hell.
In fact, every year when this day rolls around, that’s what they call it: HELLDAY.
Ya see, it’s Nathan’s birthday.
“Nate,” as Mike, Tammy, and his big brother Matt called him, passed away two weeks before his high school graduation a few years ago.
Visit their lovely home and you’ll see his pictures everywhere. I have two grown kids and two grandkids, and I can’t fathom the pain of losing one.
My brain won’t let me go there.
While I’m cracking Friday jokes, Tammy feels as if she’s gonna die. As I take lunch, Mike thinks, “Halfway there. Twelve more hours and it’s over.” I clock out for the day, excited about a couple days off, while Matt is wishing life had never come along and savagely ripped his heart out.
We never know the agony behind a smile. Who can fathom the HELL which burns in the depths of the human heart?
Every year, HELLDAY comes once more.
While I complain about traffic.
How many Mike’s do I pass on the street every day, fully unaware they are dying inside? How many Matt’s brush past me in the space of a week? How many Tammy’s in my neighborhood do their best to keep their sanity on a day when I complain about having to mow the yard?
How much agony, heartbreak, anxiety, depression and pain breathe my air in the space of 24 hours, while I walk in, around and right through their HELL, blissfully unaware?
Lord, help me to be more sensitive to the heartache of others. Let me SEE the hellfire burning behind their eyes. Allow me to feel the pain of the emotionally fatal.
People are dying, Lord. I can do more. I will do more.
Broken People 