I came across this journal entry today and found that there was a lot to be learned from this experience of mine, so I decided I wanted to share it with you.
9/18/2006
I had the unnerving pleasure of developing some film today for a woman who had recently lost her newborn baby. Being the only one working and utterly swamped, I approached the counter to help two women when I was handed a letter. The woman said the letter was to go with the roll of film and I was supposed to read it. After taking the roll of film to the back I continued working frantically to keep up. With orders slowly slipping past the one hour mark, I was forced to tell people it would take more than an hour. I finally got to the woman’s film and read the letter. I was told to be very careful with the film for these would be the only memories this woman would have of her lost child. I put the film through the processor and continued working.
The mother of this child must have overheard me telling customers that it would take longer than an hour and approached me at the counter. She was wondering if her order was going to be late and she said she needed them as soon as possible. She had to go out of town to the funeral and she had little time. As she was listing off why her time was short, she started to tear up. She was talking to me as if I was part of her current circumstances. We were looking at each other and for a moment I felt as if I was an element of it; a character in this part of her story. I said I would do everything I could to get hers done on time.
It was hard to scan those photos. It was hard to look at the loss, what most have been the greatest of failures in this woman’s eyes; maybe not her failure, but the malfunction of life. I don’t know what it’s like to loose something so cherished, but there in front of me was someone’s contribution to this world and their own life, captured only in a photograph. I didn’t know how to feel about this. Maybe I should have felt sorry for her and the cards that were dealt. Maybe I should have felt foolish for being so emotionless when I asked if she wanted doubles or a CD with these pictures, not knowing what they were of. Perhaps I should feel like a hero for completing her order on time and trying to give her a look and a smile that conveyed sentiment as I handed her the pictures. All of these are not what this is about.
We all try so hard to distance ourselves from loss and failure, so as to make ourselves feel like it can’t happen to us. Our desire to make it through another day unscathed by problems is enough to put other people’s dilemmas on a shelf. For a moment, after sending this mother on her way, I didn’t feel anything. After thinking about it for a little bit, I didn’t believe it right to feel bad for her or to feel pity, because how can you share those feelings with someone without making them more aware of the hurt? Did God cry when this happened? Did he hug his own son and resent the world he created for an moment? Did He even ask, “Why?”
God hates sin, he loathes it. Whose sin was it that caused this child to die? It doesn’t matter. God does not delight in sin and thus he does not make sin befall anyone. So we have to ask ourselves, are we with God against sin or are we against God because of what he has “done” to us?
I have a great respect for this mother, which in my heart she will always be, because her life will be filled with many complicated questions to triumph over. I can only hope and pray, that as each day passes in her life, she will find the strength to press on, knowing that one day she will see her child again and she will call her, mother.
