Maybe I’ll be writing about stuff I don’t want to write about until the day I die.

That’s probably kind of true.

Last month I wrote a post about Helping Your Friends Through Sad Stuff.

You guys – why is there always SO MUCH sad stuff?

If it isn’t in the news (and it is ALWAYS in the news) then it’s on your living room sofa and at the coffee shop and it’s showing up in your gmail account and dripping into you phone via text and emoticons.

A lot of bad stuff goes down.

At church last weekend there were some guys wearing t-shirts that said “share your story” and there was a conversation encouraging us to engage people by sharing our own personal story with others.  There was more to that idea than I am addressing right now but I was thinking about my story and I was thinking in reverse – as one is apt to do when one thinks about one’s story.  (“One“.  Three times is one too many.)

I think about The Time Before.

The time before my life looked like it does now.

The time when I was married and the receiver of love notes and back scratches and encouraging conversations.

When I could not have possibly known what my future would hold.  The tidal wave and the shipwreck on my horizon.  The sabotage and the treason.

And if you had told my ever fearful heart that The Worst Case Scenario would be coming true, I would have told you that if it did, I would die.

I would have confessed that I was certain that the wreckage from such a thing would swallow me deep in a watery grave.

And I would have believed that was true, had you told me before what would happen next.

But the Worst Case Scenario did, in fact, careen on my shore.  Its heavy waves dashed through our “normal” and left us abandoned.

And do you know what?

I did not die.

I am not dead.

The Worst Case Scenario did not kill me.

And this is what I tell my friends and my strangers when I get those late night texts and unexpected voice mail messages and short and lonely email messages about broken marriages and broken people and all of our fears and our sins coming into the light.

I say (and you can say this too): I promise, you are going to make it.

(I did not say your marriage is going to make it.  I’m not promoting empty promises my friends.  I did say YOU are going to make it.)

Not only will you have to say this to your friend, you’ll probably have to believe this for your friend too.

Words have power.

When you are on the receiving end of texts that bear terrible earth shattering news, there are very few things you can type back.

The texts and the phone calls and the face to face conversations where your friend says:

He left.
He said he doesn’t love me anymore.
I found a secret e-mail account.
He’s been abusing alcohol.
He wants a divorce.
There’s another woman.
He’s addicted to pornography.

So. Many. Worst. Case. Scenarios.

The tears and the confessions and the broken hearts and the mouths that, in despair, utter the words, “I’m so scared – what should I do?”

“Breathe.”

I always answer, “Breathe.”

I’ve sent almost this exact same text out more times than I would care to know.

“You will not die.  This will not kill you.  (It feels like it will.  I know that it does.)  But I promise it will not.  Today you just have one job – breathe.”

And I mean it.  Every horrible time.

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