The ideas of mourning, comforting, and bearing one another’s burdens have always had deep appeal for me. But I’m beginning to see that, for most of my Mormon life, the parts of myself that deeply needed those things rarely showed up at church. When I put on my Sunday best, I guess I usually left those parts in the closet. What’s worse is, I think most everyone else in the room did the same thing.
The problem is that the words mourn and comfort and bear — words central to what our lives in the Church are meant to be — require truly being with people. Really seeing them. Hearing them. Sitting with them in whatever they may be going through. We can’t lift others’ burdens until we are willing to touch their burdens. In order to mourn with others, we’re going to have to mourn ourselves. In order to comfort, we’re going to have to understand what’s wrong. Only then will we be able to determine what might actually bring them comfort.
I started to see it more clearly when I moved to my town several years ago. There’s a little church on the corner that offers Drive-Thru Prayer on Monday mornings, and I began to notice I felt something every time I drove by.
Although I’ve not taken them up on it, it appears that drive-thru prayer is exactly what it sounds like. What it looks like is two old guys sitting in a corner of the parking lot on folding chairs, under a little pop-up canopy. They often wear baseball caps, which makes me think what they’re wearing isn’t deemed important to the service they’re offering. They just hang up a banner on the street that says Drive-Thru Prayer, sit down and wait for anyone to show up.
And sometimes I see people there in their cars, with the two guys leaning together at the open window, heads bowed. I’ve never gotten close enough to hear what they’re saying, but it pricks me somewhere right in my heart every time. I imagine myself stopping some morning, rolling down my window, laying out my neediness in hopes that someone else might share it for a moment and help me lift it up. Maybe just make enough space under it for me to really get some leverage and be able to grip it better myself.
Maybe I would say, ‘My kids aren’t believers anymore, and I wonder whether it means I went wrong somewhere or whether they’re right and I’m wasting my time with church.’ Or, ‘I’m worried about my kid who smokes pot. I don’t know that much about pot, and maybe it isn’t that bad, but I worry about it a lot.’ Or perhaps, ‘I’m worried about our country. I don’t know how we got where we are, or whether we’re going to survive, or blow up the world. It makes me crazy when I can’t fix things, so I obsess about them and eat m&ms. I can’t stop.’ Or, ‘I’m feeling angry because I decided to stay home to raise my kids, like I thought I should, but now they’re gone. I’m not sure what to do next or how we’re ever going to retire on one income. No one told me when I skipped a career that they’d invent computers and I’d feel unqualified to even run a cash register by the time I got around to wanting a job.’
Or scarier still, ‘I know I’m going to be facing my parents’ deaths soon. I’ve always believed in the afterlife, of course. But…is there really an afterlife?’
There are so many things I could say, and these two old parking lot guys wouldn’t know me at all, so they wouldn’t think much of it. My worries are probably a lot like theirs. So they’d just lean there listening next to my open window, glad someone stopped, and after I’d unloaded everything but my groceries they’d bow their heads, tap into their faith and say whatever they say when they offer a drive-thru prayer.
And they’d work their lifting magic. If saying those things out loud to someone else who then petitioned God on my behalf gave me one second to catch my breath, that’d be worth a lot. I believe I would drive away lighter.
But I haven’t spent my life voicing those thoughts at church. I’ve kept them all to myself, and then decades of lessons and ideals have been piled on top and I’ve gone home each Sunday feeling heavier, not lighter. And alone.
I never glimpsed it until I saw strangers laying out their problems in a parking lot of someone else’s church, and felt my own gaping heart every time I drove by.
And now, finally, I’m beginning to understand that coming to church can be an act of service in ways I’d never thought of. Showing up as myself, sitting by someone else, holding the hymn book together, asking how they are, noticing whether what they’re telling me really matches what I’m seeing. Sharing what I’ve learned as well as what I lack, generously and with the intention to lift anyone who needs it. Laying out my struggle and asking whether anyone might be willing to help me carry it.
Surely this is why Christ asked us to meet together. To remember Him, but also practice what he taught: loving. To look around, pay attention, and gather our marching orders for the week. I thought being an active Mormon meant showing up and performing my calling. Now I see that the things I’ve found lacking at church my whole life — the healing work of mourning and comforting and bearing, the lifesaving relief of truly being known — are probably also the things I’ve neglected to offer others. Don’t give up on me. I may get this church thing figured out yet.
image by Anskit licensed under CC by-SA 2.0