For the past two weeks I’ve been walking through each day with a hidden heavy heart, an unspoken, unshared sadness.  Nothing’s amiss in my world.  No, this heartache stems from the hurts and worries of people I love.  Within the span of three hours two weeks ago, three of my closest friends called or emailed asking me to pray for them.  Of course, they had to call when my world was at its most chaotic, at times when I had to let the call roll to voicemail to listen to at a later time.  I can’t even express the pain that filled me when I heard their voices and knew I wasn’t there for them, didn’t respond when they had reached out and couldn’t at midnight as I drove home from work.  Each told of a story that brought me to tears:  a husband who had cheated and whispered the words, “I don’t love you”, a new pregnancy and a prayer for a happier ending than the last, a sick child needing surgery and scared, young parents.  I responded to each of them the next morning promising to lift each of their struggles up to the One who loves them more than I could but haven’t been able to shake the magnitude of the battle each are fighting.

For days amidst the craziness of freshmen move-ins, tech support, walkie-talkies, and thousands of text messages about dorm rooms with bad jacks and no wireless signal, I’ve been thinking about perspective.  Sure, I was knee-deep in 16+ hour work days and hadn’t seen my house in the daylight in far too long.  Yeah, I was exhausted and tired of a long list of nouns (people, places, and things), but I knew that these struggles were trivial in comparison to what my friends were going through.  A wise friend once told me, “Sorrows are never meant to be compared.  Every hurt and mountain to climb is personal to each individual, and we aren’t in a pain competition.”  He was right, but part of caring for one another is feeling each other’s wounds and standing behind those you love in case they fall even if you can’t say I’ve been there or I know what you’re going through.  The human experience is so much more about compassion than competition.  I’ll be the first to admit that every once in a while I get caught up in my own drama bubble, but it doesn’t take long to remember who and what truly matters in this world.  Those are the things that touch your heart, leave you awake at night, and bring you the most joy.  You see, it’s all about perspective.