YMJen

For several years now, I’ve used resources from Marv Penner and Megan Hutchinson to train my adult leaders on “Helping Hurting Kids.” This training is based on the premise that in the world of today’s teenagers, all kids are hurting.

I was reminded of this today when I received a Facebook message from one of my student leaders saying, “Jen, I don’t think I can come tonight. We have a family emergency & I have to go see my grandma, who’s in the hospital.”

After receiving this message, I immediately called this student and simply said, “Tell me about what’s going on.”

She took a deep breath and said, “It’s complicated.”

After several moments of silence, she then proceeded to tell me about how her grandma, who her family has only recently reconciled with following a several year estrangement, is now at death’s door. She’s been in the hospital for the last two weeks, battling lung cancer that’s metastasized throughout her body.

In that moment, my heart broke for this girl and her family: For the years they spent apart from one another; For a reconciliation that happened, but occurred too late for her grandma to recognize the incredible woman her granddaughter is becoming; And for my student’s mom who on top of dealing with her own grief, is now dealing with the guilt she feels over having kept her kids separated from her parents.

Life is, indeed, complicated.

So complicated, in fact, that there’s nothing I can do to fix this situation. There’s not even anything I can do to spare this student the pain that she’ll no doubt experience in the not to distant future.

All I can do is be present in her life and allow her to grieve, cry, and be angry, all the while reassuring her that those emotions are normal and that she WILL make it through this.

More importantly, I can also connect this girl and her family with Christ, not by spouting Christian cliches, but instead by reminding them that in Christ, we have a God who is present with us in the deepest and darkest hours of our lives, so much so, that he even weeps with us.