I don’t know what the past year has been like for you. You might be a little sad to see 2009 go. You might be saying “Good riddance!” Or you might be somewhere in the middle.

While there have been some highlights for me (like starting this blog, the Daylights visit at Easter and my new nephew), it has been a tough year on many fronts. A year ago, something happened and I felt like my world completely shattered. It was just one more thing in a long line of hurts and emotional cuts. I often think of my heart as being black, blue, purple and green with fading bruises. In order to deal with it, I wrote a joking email about how someone had stolen my funny and I wanted to file a police report. (Here is a slightly tamer version.) In it, I told my closest friends a bit of what I was going through. Most of them responded with words of encouragement or Bible verses.

But one of my friends just wrote back and said “that sucks”. That was it, two little words, not even ones that I normally use. But they meant more to me than any other response. Because sometimes, there really aren’t words. It is just a matter of sitting in silence and grieving with each other.

So instead of filling the silence with the words my racing mind wants to blurt out, I am learning to reach out more by saying less.

If this has been an awful year for you, I’m not going to give you any sugar with your medicine. You know what, it just sucks. That’s it. It does. And until it doesn’t suck anymore, I’ll be here if you need someone to sit with you. Because sometimes, it is the time to weep. I’ll cry with you.

Strangers are made friends through an offer of shared suffering.

Stephen Parolini