Pain

There has been a number of painful events happening around me. Not to me, but to friends. To people I know and to some I have never met, but "know" through social media.
I have cried over their pain. But when I think about them, I think how they have to hold this pain for their lifetime. I can leave it. They have to tread this deep ocean and try to breath. And it doesn't stop tomorrow. It doesn't stop next year. It will always be there.
Pain.
Such Deep Pain.
How can anyone hold it?
How can anyone stand up in another day while holding so much?
I think there must be some way to see on the outside what they are feeling on the inside.
How can our insides hold all this pain without it showing up on the outside in a physical experience?
I keep thinking of a tower of Lego's that falls to the ground in a million little pieces.
Melting into a puddle.
An explosion of the physical body.
I picture a widow standing at her husbands funeral with her children. She is standing. She is in one piece. She is strong. I am positive she doesn't feel it. But the fact she is standing is a testament.
I don't know how to comfort those who have lost.
I don't know what to say to those experiencing the deep oceans of hurt.
I cry into my pillow at night hoping against all hope they are sinking into Jesus. I don't know how, I don't know if thinking is even possible, but I hope and I pray. I hope they can sink into Jesus. To cling to Him.
I hope others will do the work of clinging to Jesus for them. When everything seems impossible.

I have a picture of those who have known pain and been able to reach a shore. I picture them in a beautiful valley of never ending fields of flowers. The ocean is always there, and sometimes they leave the flowers to bath in the ocean again, but it's never as deep or endless as it once was. They can rise out of the water and walk to the field of flowers to lay down.

I pray that peaceful fields of flowers would one day be found in every heart that is hurting. That we can walk up out of the ocean even if it's just to sit in the surf for a while.

I pray for those experiencing deep oceans of pain.
My heart is crying with yours and lifting you up. You feel alone. But I will do the work of believing for you. Of sinking you into Jesus when you can't. Of hoping when it seems to you there is none. Of helping you hold together when you think you are going to explode into a million little pieces.
I will pray for you when you can't.

JESUS! Carry us. Don't let us drown! Hold us up as long as it takes for us to find a shore. As long as it takes for us to even hope that there could be a shore. Hold us. We are weak, but you are strong. I am a vapor, You are everlasting. You never change.
You are greater than my heart and You know everything. 
Thank You.
My hope is found in you. When everything else has failed, You are there. You know. You Love.    You Are.