Monday Morning Musing

There is a quote in a C. S. Lewis book I read recently in which a mentor tells the everyman that he isn’t equipped to help someone through a particular grief because he has never suffered in that particular way himself. Can someone who has never known a certain kind of sorrow have the right to counsel someone who has?

The mentor says:

“That’s no office of yours. You’re not a good enough man for that. When your own heart’s been broken it will be time for you to think of talking.”

As I sit looking out my window this morning, reflecting on that passage, another quote comes to mind, this one from Oscar Wilde:

“The only people I would care to be with now are artists and people who have suffered: those who know what beauty is, and those who know what sorrow is: nobody else interests me.”

No one can see just how bad it had gotten. As much as I told myself I didn’t need anyone, that I was fine alone, it never became true.

“My story is not a pleasant one; it is neither sweet nor harmonious, as invented stories are; it has the taste of folly and bewilderment, of madness and dreams — like the lives of all people who no longer want to lie to themselves.”

Hermann Hesse

I am staring out my window now, watching the light slowly grow, and I am in awe of just how incredibly beautiful it all is.

I don’t have any answers yet. Sometimes I am simply stunned by how profoundly this unexpected reunion has marked me. And I want to remember how thankful I am to have been so blessed with such companionship.

I am committed to it.

I intend to meet it with tenderness. To be grateful for what is given. To love with open hands. To be kinder, having known sorrow; more generous, having known need, and more reverent toward the sacredness of being known by another person.

There is so much I cannot control, and so much I still do not understand. But I can choose what I bring to it. I can bring love. I can bring kindness. I can be grateful.

The light is still growing outside my window. I hope to carry some of it with me into the week.