Why We Need Eachother

I recently met with a then-acquaintance who had cancer and treatment a couple years after I did. As  young people, as kids, in some people’s eyes. I didn’t realize the immense weight that I had been carrying since the diagnosis. Having nobody my age with whom I could connect over shared experiences. I had an intricate surgery, and she had chemo but there was still so much overlap between our experiences. We exchanged war stories of grueling procedures and the like, but even when we were talking about other things like school and boys, it was still so refreshing to know that someone else my age knew the weight of what life could deal. There was an underlying acknowledgement of how shitty life can be. But also how beautiful. Traumatic experiences do that to you. Give you dual vision. You see the dark and the light. And after you come to the light at the end of your tunnel of tragedy, you expect everyone else to get it, too. But that just isn’t the case. Older people understand more often, but I don’t hang out with older people on a regular basis. It can become isolating to see the world in this brand new way, of suffering and pain and sorrow and of beauty and joy and light, all at the same time.

Today, my devotional talked about Jesus walking down the Via Dolorosa to his eternally-awaited death and how Simon the Cyrene was recruited to carry his cross behind him. It prompted us to reach out to our Simon’s to help us in our darkest hours. ‘Cool,’ I thought, ‘I’ll do that one day soon.’ But God had other plans. I was sitting waiting for a call when I had a sudden flashback to the two days of testing and diagnosis. I’m going in to my oncologist tomorrow for digestion issues and I imagined the exact same thing happening again. I panicked, internally, though my face would never show it. I texted the then-acquaintance, now-friend, and asked her to pray. Not against cancer but against my crazy imagination that takes me right back to my trauma and threatens to pull it into my present. Of course. She was on board. I told her thank you and that she was the first person I thought of because she knows every layer of what I’m experiencing. And just like that, I had reached out to a Simon of Cyrene. I knew, truly, that I wasn’t alone

You are not alone. In whatever it is, I hope and pray that God will bring you someone to walk with you. Someone who’s been there, too. Because we are so much stronger together than apart. Satan loves division, but God loves multiplication.

I pray that you find your Simons. Your standbys. Your “one”s that you can reach out to for help. A three cord strand is not easily broken.