By Janet Smith

(Janet just finished the Doable Evangelism Course at Sparks Christian Fellowship and submitted this story because she thought OA’s were a big part of why it happened.)

We have little in common, really. The one thing we do have in common is an unspeakable grief and pain, which we have both experienced to the core of our being. We have both lost our husbands, our soul mates - the one we both believed we would be our “grow old with me, the best is yet to be” person.

We had been co-workers and casual acquaintances before, but this common denominator has brought us to a new level of connection, a new level of understanding, a new level of communication with each other that would likely not have occurred without this horrific event in our lives. It is one of those tragic events, like losing a child, that requires you to have experienced it yourself to begin to understand the devastation.

Just as friends told me, I tell her, “If you need me, if you just need to talk or cry, call me - I will be there for you,” knowing that, like me, she probably won’t. I have no clue as to why it can be so difficult to reach out and make that call ‘to talk and/or cry’, but it is. I am thankful that God allows me to notice if she is having “an okay day” or a “bad day.” In that initial two-year period there aren’t really any good days. At best they are just okay.

Even more, I am thankful to God that we get time for her and I to be alone. She knows that when I ask her how is it going that it is from a different level. She knows it is a question from a friend who has walked her path and a few years ahead of her in this walk. She knows she can open up and share with me.

We talk about our faith getting us through this unending pain and she tells me about her family worrying about her state of mind and her strength. We talk about wanting to crawl into our beds, pull the covers over our heads and have the world go away until the pain is no longer so intense.

I don’t see her everyday at work, but when I do, one look tells me if she struggling through the day or having one of those “I’m hanging in there today” days. My heart breaks for her and I immediately pray for her and the path she is walking…and the path she has yet to walk.