The Fear Beneath Our Sympathy
When people we love experience a health crisis, we feel the impact ourselves. Not physically, but emotionally…quietly and deeply.
Lately I’ve found myself dwelling on the difference between feeling sorry for someone and fearing the possibility of losing them. Those two emotions live in very different places to me.
Recent health scares involving two of the closest people in my life….friends who have walked beside me for more than fifty years, brought that distinction into sharper focus.
When friendships stretch across half a century, they stop feeling like friendships and become family.
Both are now on the road to recovery, and for that I am deeply grateful. And especially appreciate all those who offered endless prayers for their recovery. But moments like these have a way of reminding us how much the people beside us matter and how easy it is to forget that their presence in our lives is never guaranteed.
For now though, we walk together side by side, overwhelmingly grateful as we journey.
The Bow Legged Blogger 
Been a stressful week. We are all closer to our own mortality than we like to think. At the same time, we are all conditioned to believe, to a degree, that we are invincible and overcome any challenge, simply because we always have.
That said, I think we are also all on the same page that, as C.S. Lewis once said, “There are far better things ahead than any we may leave behind.”
I don’t believe any of us is in a rush to leave our friends or family—which, as you point out, is sometimes one and the same thing, but I’m also grateful knowing none of us fears the day when we are called home. In fact, I do think there is a part of us that is excited for that day of victorious glory.
For now, I give thanks to God that He saw fit to give us all more time with our friend.
Semper Fi, brother.
B
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Thanks for sharing your feelings and thoughts. We’ve come a long way since our high school days.
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🩷🙏🏻
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