To Rejoice with Those who Mourn

I figured this an apt metaphor for my feelings of this time of year.

Let me preface this post by saying, I love my parents. Both of them I truly believe did a bang-up job raising me, for which I will always be grateful. Furthermore, I also want to state before we go further, that I truly believe that parents who put in the effort to raise up their children, who are caring, and loving, nurturing and work to turn their little ones, be they biological or not, into fully functional adults are worthy of heaps of recognition and praise. Parenting is a hard thing to do, it is often a thankless thing to do, and so know that if you are walking this road, by me at least, what you are doing is seen and is appreciated.

Now, with that hedging out of the way, I want to talk about what it was like for me to have a difficult relationship with this time of year. The time beginning with the lead up to Mother’s Day, continuing until Father’s Day had passed. For though my wife and I are now parents to a wonderful little girl, and as such the pain of this time has faded a fair amount, for years we struggled with infertility and the confusion and turmoil that accompanied it.

For years we tried to have a child, but month after month, the pregnancy test would come back with a single line: negative. For years we tried to have a child, only for month after month to feel like we were being punched in the gut, in the form of an unwanted result from a nine-dollar strip of cheap plastic from Walmart.

This was what monthly life was for us; the baseline. It was a time of waiting to be disappointed, waiting to be hurt. Made worse intermittently because we were both young, in our mid to late twenties, not an uncommon time for our friends and family to have children of their own. With each instance, what would normally have been a joyous occasion instead became a landmine; a reminder of what was evading us that we wanted so badly.

It is hard to express this kind of pain to someone who has not experienced it for themselves. But to come close, I suggest the following mental exercise. Imagine that every time you saw a child, there was a part of you that felt sad. Not all of you, but a part. Imagine that every time you saw a happy, smiling parent, there was a part of you that felt that you were failing at something that was easy for someone else. Imagine every time a friend or family member of yours got pregnant, or their child passed a milestone which warranted family celebrations, or they complained about being kept up to all hours of the night with a crying baby, there was a part of you, not all, but a part, that felt you were somehow deficient as a human being because you could not have the one thing that is supposed to be a universal experience to all life. You are still happy for others, they are still your friends and family after all, but in that happiness there is a thick streak of pain that is just… there.

This, but constant, is how I remember this pain to be. For me it was an ache interspersed with moments of outright torment, mixed in with thinking that you shouldn’t be feeling the way you do though you cannot help yourself; a pain that at best you can be distracted from for a while, but that never goes away. Toss into that the nature of who I am being that I feel the need to be a stoic, and long story short, it was a tough time.

Now keep imagining that this maelstrom of feelings are yours, and think for a moment about this time of year. The time beginning about a month before Mother’s Day, continuing to when Father’s Day has passed. What comes first, is a pretty solid shift in how all advertising sounds. While only a brief moment ago all sales copy seemed to be about Easter Bunnies laying chocolate eggs, suddenly it becomes in its entirety about one thing. Moms. Our moms. New moms. Moms we value so much as to of course think ourselves ungrateful if we do not buy at least one item from Appelt’s extended catalogue. In between the top 40 singles on repeat for a solid month, this is what radio is. This is what TV is. This is what virtually every magazine and newspaper is. A reminder of what you are not.

Drip. Drip. Never Stopping. Drip. Drip.

Then comes Mother’s Day itself, always on a Sunday. In many churches, Carnations are diligently handed out to those deserving of them, a red and frilly reminder, again, of what you want more than anything, but that nevertheless evades you. The worship leader spends his time praising the Mother’s of the congregation, the pastor expounds, every moment that same dripping reminder. Given the locale, every moment trying to fight off the thought that God has chosen to withhold his blessings from you.

Then the process repeats, this time for Father’s Day, over a month away.

Being someone for whom this time of year is not a blessing, is hard, full stop. This goes beyond just those like us who had issues conceiving, as well. Say you have a parent you loved who recently passed, a child you have lost contact with or who died before their time. For people living through any of these dark nights of the soul, every moment during this time of year is much the same as mine. A constant reminder of what isn’t right.

In saying this, I am not trying to make a case for getting rid of Mother’s Day and Father’s Day. As I said before, being a parent is often thankless, and so for the little two days and their leadup worth of recognition may be, they are nevertheless priceless for many. But instead what I am saying is that for the same reason there are those people for whom Thanksgiving hurts, or Christmas hurts, there are also those for whom the mix of emotion of this time of the year amounts to nearly two months of heightened, aching pain.

I remember a conversation my wife had while we were in the midst of this time of struggle in our lives. Whether it was implied, or outright stated, I can’t fully recall, but the gist was that she should really learn to take the words of Paul in Romans 12:5 to heart. She should really learn to be happy with those who are happy. Translation, she should really get over herself and stop being such a wet blanket.

Thinking about that conversation reminds me of what a professor, I believe Tremper Longman, once told me about how Biblical wisdom was meant to be dispensed. “It isn’t just the words you say,” he told the class, “but also who you say them to and when you say them that matters.” To learn to rejoice with others who are rejoicing is not a bad life lesson, but I can’t say it was a useful proverb for someone to level at Shannon at that time. Far from enacting the kind of reaction I suspect they were anticipating, for my wife to suddenly jump up, forgetting years of pain, happy face firmly painted in place, instead it just made her feel like now on top of everything, she apparently was a bad Christian as well.

Romans 12:5 is a verse I think gets taken to extremes it wasn’t meant to be. Often how I have heard it tossed at people in situations like ours is as a reminder to not be such killjoys all the time, a reading that conveniently forgets how the second part of that same verse is a command to mourn with those who mourn, albeit, an admittedly difficult thing to do when the mourning stretches on for years if not more.

A far more recognizeable symbol than a text message. contact is the point, though.

So In place of a reading like this, how about we say the following about how this verse should be applied during particularly these two months of the year? For those of you who are hurting, to the best of your ability, be happy with those who are happy, but don’t forget there is a difference between being happy for someone, and being as exuberant as those who don’t have this millstone around their neck can be. You are not them, and how you are feeling is justified, so don’t force something that isn’t there. Rejoice with those who need rejoicing just now, to the best of your ability, but recognize that maybe the best way to really show this rejoicing is in fact to duck out early so that the good times can keep going, and so you can have the mental gumption it takes to face another month. Rejoice with those who are rejoicing, sure, but recognize that allowing yourself this option to take your leave when you need it will go a long way to helping you do just this for longer than just now.

And to those of you for whom this time is not one of pain, I ask you to remember also to mourn with those who are mourning. Don’t forget to recognize that for these two months of the year, there are people in your life for whom every day is a challenge. Let them duck out of the goings-on when they need to. Even make excuses for them to do so if that is what they need. Check up on them after, say you are praying for them, and then proceed to talk about anything else.

For me just a few short years ago when these two months were a train wreck in slow motion, I think this was closer to the wisdom of this passage that would have been lovely to have heard.