A couple months ago I had a friend getting ready to move away.
I was not prepared for her departure to knock the wind out of me like it did.
Three different people asked me if I was okay. (I must have looked a wreck.)
I said No, each time, and felt loved like I hadn’t in a long time.

I felt seen.

Each listened to me in turn, absorbing my sound bite and offering what comfort they could (it wasn’t nothing).

And the third woman paused with me. Shared her heart with me.
Gave me a chance to get past my pain, to see her struggle.
To share her burden as I looked for a place to lay mine.

These multiple offerings of compassion struck me as a great contrast to the women who could skewer my heart without knowing it, either by their words or by their silence.

And I prayed I would have eyes to be that one who could see.

“The great thing, if one can, is to stop regarding all the unpleasant things as interruptions of one’s “own” or real life. The truth is of course that what one calls the interruptions are precisely one’s real life– the life God is sending one, day by day.”

C.S. Lewis