We meet again, nuance. The work feels heavier today. Some days are lighter than others, but not today. Today our hearts ache, and our bodies are weighed down by grief. We wouldn’t want to be anywhere else, but that doesn’t mean being here is easy.
We’re navigating the realities of sharing truth with compassion, grace with understanding. We’re discerning a time for educating and empowering while creating space for those grieving and mourning. We strive to be a safe place for our patients; a place where feelings, facts and faith intersect.
Where a seventeen-year-old girl comes through our doors and wants an abortion because this was one mistake and she wants it taken care of quickly and quietly. Or the twenty-eight-year-old woman whose been taken advantage of and “can’t have this baby right now.” The injustice, the heartbreak, the brokenness of it all. We feel it, the injustice: it feels like a pit in our stomach and an ache in our heart. And yet – while we hate injustice, we know one injustice doesn’t justify another. One wrong doing doesn’t validate another. And it isn’t fair; no, it hurts and it’s heavy. We weep and long for a day where there will be no more hurt, no more pain, and no more tears.
But until that day, we keep doing what we know to be right. We hold the hurting close. In the silence, whether on a chair or on the floor, we’ll sit with them at the bottom, rock bottom. Whether sharing their stories through whispering, weeping or wailing, we’ll listen. You see, nuance, they want “it” to leave: be rid of, to vanish, to cease. Doesn’t ending “it” end all the hurt, erase the pain, counteract the wrong? Or…
Does ending “it” only compile into “one more thing” you remember, regret, and remorse. What if ending life isn’t truly “life giving?”
They want “it” to leave, but what are they looking for? Hope. A lifeline. Someone to say “it will be all right. You are seen, you are valued, you are loved. And when the world screams you can’t, just be rid of it, we’ll proclaim louder: you can, just choose it.”
We’re not promising the journey will be easy: it often isn’t. But Jesus didn’t promise comfort or ease. He promised life.
Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” John 14:6
– Mackenzie Hurt, Marketing Specialist