sorrow and thankfulness

My kids are pretty tough cookies; it takes quite a bit to make them cry or need to come into bed with me when they wake up at night. So I knew something had shaken Boo when she came into my room a few weeks ago and asked if she could sleep with me. She had had a nightmare and was in tears. As she nestled into me, she told me in whispers of the terrifying things she had dreamed. She had been wandering around a city, and she knew that there was a war. She was alone and was looking for me but somehow knew that I had died. But she kept looking because she knew she just needed to find me. I held her close, trying not to cry myself.

When she was tiny, she would have dreams or imaginings about monsters and frightening imaginary creatures. I could always calm her down by telling her that I was here, and I could keep her safe. That everything was going to be fine. That those things weren't real.

Suddenly, I couldn't do it. I couldn't tell her that war isn't real. That children losing their parents isn't real. That me being right beside her was going to make everything okay. I just held her as close as I could without making her more scared. I must have done something right because she was fast asleep within a few minutes. But I lay awake, thinking of all those children in the world living Boo's nightmare for real. With no one to hold them close, to promise them that everything was going to be okay. That the things they fear aren't real. My heart broke for them and I cried and cried in the quiet darkness.

***

Today the floodgates of sorrow opened again, this time for a real person with a real story; not an idea of the millions of frightened people facing war and hunger and death, but a real person who has tasted freedom and peace and life, who will soon lose it all again.

Over the past few years, our little church, which is very welcoming yet had been surprisingly homogenous (read: white), became home to a growing number of Burundian parishioners. Many of them are refugees who came to Canada recently and made their home in our city. They had found a home with us and told their friends and family members. And more came. Those in our midst are refugees who came here to seek asylum, to ask our government to let them stay because they faced certain violence or even death if they returned. Some still had family members back home, living in fear. We saw many of them reunited over the years and have rejoiced much with the arrival of spouses and children. And even with the birth of new children.

So today was especially heartbreaking: we said goodbye to a member whose refugee hearing came and went and who got a negative decision. Appeals failed. Requests for humanitarian consideration failed, as did a last-ditch plea to stop the deportation. She will be leaving in two days. We surrounded her and put our hands on her and her husband, and we prayed. I don't know this woman well, but the tears streamed down my face for the fear she must feel that I can't even imagine. For the loneliness that must surround her. For her. And for so many more like her whose lives and safety are so precarious.

In that profound sorrow, I understood something real. I have a gift. So many, many gifts. The sorrow I've been carrying around for the past few weeks has felt very real, but it has made me blind to the beauty of what I have. The black cloud has made me rather self-centred. It has blocked the view of the blessings - the many, many blessings - that I have. My life, my children. The fact that we have never wanted for food, or shelter, or clothing. In fact, we have more of each of those than we need. That we do not fear for our lives or our safety. That we can freely speak our minds and our hearts. That we have friends and family that we love and with whom we can be in contact. I have a good job; the girls are free to go to school and be as educated as they please.

The angst that I've been feeling can be diminished to a flippant hashtag: #firstworldproblems. And they really are. I feel like I should beg forgiveness, of God, of the universe, of those suffering around the world, for being so whiny. For forgetting my blessings. For not being more generous with the blessings I do have. For not opening my heart and mind and whole being to seeing what good I do have and working to somehow share that with the world.

I feel completely helpless in the case of this Burundian woman who will be sent back to a situation she fears may kill her. I can do nothing to help her. And I could let that get me down, too. Somehow, though, I think that if I were in a terrible situation and I saw people around me who had so many, many blessings, I'd want them to be happy. I'd envy them - no question. But I'd want what they have so that I, too, could be happy.

It is said that the thankful heart will find, in every hour, some heavenly blessings. It is time to start being thankful.