I'm sitting in the counselor's office...

I'm sitting in the counselor’s office at Lifa’s primary school. We only had one son last time I sat here, and our hearts were bruised with disillusionment. We had just moved to Cape Town, and Lifa had experienced racism and religious persecution for the first time at nine years old. We abruptly switched suburbs and schools, desperate to remove him from danger and feeling completely lost. This school and this counselor was a healing balm for Lifa - and for us.

I’m back today to sit with others in their heartache. This school and our community just lost a precious 11-year old girl.

There are tears to be wept, stories to be told, and memories that never got to be made. Yet life keeps relentlessly moving at life’s speed while school children, teachers and families mourn.

We’ve opened our church for her memorial. We’ve opened our schedules to offer counseling. And we pray for the kind of light that can only be seen in the darkest of nights, the deepest place of grief.

The indelible mark of loss was made in enough lives to fill an auditorium, and it’s so hard to make sense of how it could happen.

But today, as I hug 6th graders, I sit with this hindsight…

Six years ago while I sat in this room in my grief,  I never would have expected I’d be able to return and help someone else hold theirs. My grief feels so small to what others carry, but grief is grief. It marks us. And it might just become something one day.

I don’t know where you sit today, but that very place could be eternally valuable.