“Be happy with those who are happy, and weep with those who weep.” NLT
-Romans 12:15
The verse that marks the delicate page of my tattered Bible in a perfectly tiny font surrounded by dancing lines of pink highlighter was always a beautiful reminder of how to be a friend. A good friend, at that. Throw the bridal shower for the newly engaged friend, deliver a pint of ice cream when the boyfriend acts up, celebrate her work promotion with a dinner downtown. Be happy with them – easy. Weep with them – short lived. Right?
Today, that verse bled somewhere into the sheet-like paper of my old book, pulsing with a heartbeat of its very own. Reading more like the New International Version whose words sunk deeper…
“Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn.” NIV
Rejoice. Not just a smile and pink balloons on the mailbox for the baby shower.
Mourn. Not just a “you’re too good for him anyway.”
The trials my friends and I are walking together feel like an uphill hike, where none of us remembered to pack the right shoes, and the heat of the sun is unforgiving. As I look at my phone, I see the updates. As one friend sits terrified in the hospital waiting room for days, another is sharing updates on a diagnosis that tugs at the corners of our mouths, turning our insides sour. We can taste the grief, and we want to spit it out, but we can’t. And as I invite these sorrows into myself with requests to pray, my eyes go numb to the words. “Please pray for me.”
Over the past few weeks, it seems the news in our group continued to pile like a mound that only made our journeys harder to trek. At times, it simply feels unbelievable. And even as I waited for my mom to text with an update from her routine oncology appointment of a cancer she’d been freed of, I’m simultaneously reading messages from a friend who’s only in the middle of walking with her sister through hers. The heaviness of my phone, and the grief we share.
Mourn with those who mourn – and we do. And it hurts.
I find myself staring into my computer screen, buried in deadlines and paralyzed by putting on a corporate face, but my heart is sharing in grief with the ones I do this life with. The ones who take a call in the middle of the day to talk through a burden, and the ones who light up my phone before the sun comes up with a question of “How can I be praying for you?”
So, weeping with those who weep is not wearing half of a pretty friendship necklace that sits gently around the neck. It’s heavy and sometimes hard to lift, but it’s real. It’s the “we” we’re all searching for. It’s the truth in never being alone. It’s the reassurance that God truly did build this beautiful thing called friendship for more than lunch dates and venting sessions and even a little (tisk) gossip. He knew the support we would need when grieving alone was a burden too heavy to carry. He knew the bond it would take to share our most vulnerable pieces without hesitation.
As we wade through these trials and pray through them together, and cling to each other for dear life – and sometimes sanity – we look forward in hope for the times that we trust will come soon when we’re rejoicing together under different circumstances. And I mean, the real laughter that flows from the gut, and the tears of joy when that good news comes. Because, we know it will. And we’re waiting. Together.
