Lamentations

Four weeks ago, a drug dealer shot and killed the son of a woman who attends my church. He was seventeen. The woman had been absent from our congregation for months, but I am told she arrived at church the Sunday following his death with a group of young women, all mothers themselves, who had been relatives and friends of her son.

I am twenty-three, childless and ill-equipped to console the woman who carries a framed photo of her dead child on the bus and through the streets, who allows herself to be rocked by sobs in the midst of a prayer, whose grief is bold, disarming and public.

She -- who unabashedly despairs, who carries her loss where she goes, who grieves the injustice of sin and death -- manifests a strength-without-reservations that I fear, if I examined myself truthfully, I would lack. This too is a thing worth lamenting.

What can I say for you? With what can I compare you, O Daughter of Jerusalem? To what can I liken you, that I may comfort you, O Virgin Daughter of Zion? Your wound is as deep as the sea. Who can heal you?