for the ones who choose to break their hearts for ours

“Compassion constitutes a radical form of criticism, for it announces that the hurt is to be take seriously, that the hurt is not to be accepted as normal and natural but is an abnormal and unacceptable condition for humanness.” – Walter Brueggemann, The Prophetic Imagination

Blessed are you who let your heart break. You don’t have to. You could just have easily skirted the issue, shrugged it off as someone else’s job. But you didn’t. You gave the ride or set up the meal train or sat in the waiting room. You handed your precious time over to the inefficiency and exhaustion of tragedy.

Blessed are you who show up during someone’s worst day because it is your job. The healthcare worker, funeral director, foster parent, chaplain, social worker, pastor, lawyer, police officer, or judge. You who have not allowed yourself to be hardened by all you’ve seen. You who offer the gift of steady presence amid swirling chaos.

Blessed are the communities of care that surround us when we fall apart. Knowing we can’t do this alone, and trusting that even if we don’t shade the answers or the right words to say or know exactly what to do, we will continue to show up. Again and again and again.

Because that’s what love demands: to let our hearts break, together.

a blessing from The Lives We Actually Have