Matthew 5:4 – Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted

I found myself contemplating this verse on a recent drive “home” to the state where I grew up. Maybe it would be more accurate to say I was seeking the comfort that this verse promised.  I was traveling to attend the celebration-of-life ceremony for one of my childhood best friends. Her time on this earth was far too short. Her passing was the result of a decades long battle with Multiple Sclerosis.  

She was a beautiful girl who grew into a beautiful woman.  She married a devoted man and became the mother of three gorgeous children. This woman and I were part of a very close-knit group of friends. For most of our adolescence, where one of us was, the others were usually close by. Small community, and midwestern life allowed us to grow fairly protected from the world but its size also left us all wanting for more than we could have in the confines of this one stop-light town. We spent days and nights dreaming of the time we’d grow up and move away, never to look back.  We were certain there was nothing except opportunity and excitement on the other side of the city limit signs. 

Grow up, we did.  

Leave, we did. 

Unexpectedly, growing apart was a piece of that as well.  A part of the plan we never saw coming and one we would have sworn was impossible.  Eventually we found ourselves scattered across the country, doing different jobs, with spouses from other places and children who grew up only knowing each other from the stories we would tell them.  

And still, even with this distance…her death, it shook me. It was this little piece of my DNA that seemed altered. When the news came to me, it seemed like someone changed the ending to my favorite book. “No, that’s not how it ends, you’re messing it up.” 

Yet, ended it had.  

I found myself on that multi-hour drive back home to a ceremony where I was sure I would find the comfort as promised in that verse. I was certain there would be something in the message of the service that would re-align those genetics. Or perhaps hugging her parents, who I knew like my own during our youth, would bring me back to center. Maybe seeing her own family, who she was so proud of, would close the chapter nicely for me. 

All of those things were wonderful, but they were not what fulfilled the promise stated in Matthew.  I didn’t find the comfort where I expected to see it. 

You see, as I entered the building that would eventually hold over 300 people who came to say goodbye to my friend, I realized I knew no one. I awkwardly stood near a table and fidgeted with my phone, watching the door with an almost desperate hope that the next person to arrive would be familiar to me. Finally, I saw one friend across the room, and he spotted me too.  We hugged and chatted until more and more of our classmates arrived. We eventually migrated together to a table in the far back of the room.  Adding chairs as needed so none of us had to sit separate from the rest. There was never a question any of us would sit elsewhere. 

The service was lovely. The pictures of her life were simultaneously endearing and devastating. She had loved so well, and she had suffered so much. I found myself more confused than comforted. I heard a letter her children wrote to her, and I was reminded that her birthday was the very next day. The fact that she wouldn’t celebrate with her loved ones as her mere 52 years commenced seemed unfathomable. 

Where was my comfort?  The verse says so clearly, “BLESSED are those who mourn.”  I wanted the blessing, and I wanted it to be obvious. I wanted it to lay in my lap at the conclusion of the service and I wanted it to fill my soul with an understanding of WHY.  Why was she taken so early?  Why was her life filled with pain?  Why was her husband a widower and her children without their precious mother?  Why did her parents have to say such an unnatural goodbye? 

I continued seeking and after the service, my friends and I began talking as you do after one of these events. We shared where we were in our lives now, flipped through each other’s pictures, bragged about our kids and caught up on 30 years of lives apart.  This was far more than the number of years we had together and yet, they had flown by.  The distance of those years seemed to shrink away as we started laughing with each other.  We shared stories of our youths that only we knew.  We filled in the blanks of our memories with the individual pieces that we individually recalled to the stories we told.  It is hard to say how close to accurate we were but the general idea of all the memories was there and our friend who had passed was at the center of all of them. She would have loved it. She would have done as we did and laughed until she wiped tears from her eyes. I am so hopeful that she heard it all and was as entertained as we were. In my heart I believe she did.

Amid it all my friend Tony said, “You know, sometimes I see pictures of all of you and I think to myself, I know them.  I REALLY KNOW them” 

I knew exactly what he meant.

There’s something about the people who saw you through braces and bad perms, first days of school and first loves, new driver car wrecks and bad decision groundings.  They see you differently.  They fill in the gaps.  

They comfort you with their presence.  

That’s when I found it.  The comfort found by the blessed who are mourning.  It wasn’t from the message.  It was from the messengers.  The carriers of my childhood stories.  They rearranged the scrambled cells of confusion and did so with the simple act of laughing through stories of our shared origins.  

God’s comforting spirit delivered through our grief and joyful memories is such a painfully sweet way to experience it. He is unfailing in meeting us when we need him, He persists until we see Him, He reminds us of his ever-presence and surprises us with his methods of doing so. 

At the end of this wonderful day that happened for a terrible reason, I knew for certain that we were blessed, with those who mourn, and who receive His comfort.   How blessed indeed. 

—Suzy Lake 

*In memory of my friend, Kendall Moody Sunneberg