Searching for Survivors

I don't recognize the name. Third one today. I open it and begin to read. Before I am done, tears are slipping down my face, and my heart wants to reach through the internet  and hug long.

For people who don't know what to say, they say much. They say they understand. They say they are alone too. They say their hearts seek to be found.

My heart seeks to find them.

These beautiful people who don't have hands to hold when they put up a tree with familiar ornaments...without familiar presence and familiar faces. These moms and dads navigating the waters of parenting alone. The women finding wholeness in self when more than half of them has been laid to rest.

The ties that bind have come undone. The never ending circle has ended.

The house is empty. The bed is large. The hole is engulfing. The weight is heavy...to heavy...for hearts so fragile...so full of pain..so full of need...need to be loved...need to be needed.

And they want to know...

"What now?"

And I look to the Father and ask, "What now?"

Surely He did not bring us through the wilderness that we should leave others to wander alone and possibly die there. Surely He did not break our hearts so hard and deep to be so callous to the pieces of others' hearts that litter the ground around us. Surely...Surely...

And I look to the Father and ask, "How?"

I leave the email open and close my eyes. I sit in the quiet, let myself soak in the pain, let my heart remember the darkest places...and know there are others in the dark, others surviving in the wilderness. How do we find them before they give up?

"How do I offer a refuge? How do I build the village in the wilderness that becomes the portal out of the desert? How do we find the survivors before they become the fatalities?"

I am listening....