the Empathy List #53: A Good Cry

Lent is a bummer, so why not embrace it?

Hey friend, Liz here.

The last time I saw Keith was at a church service around Thanksgiving. As bearded twenty-somethings milled around us, he asked me, “How is your eye?”

“Not good,” I said. Nearby, his wife bounced their newborn in her arms while his daughter sprinted up pews, chased by children in vests and tiny loafers. I asked, “How is your cancer?”

“Not good,” he said.

These were days before Covid-19. In 2017 when Keith and I met, church meant bodies together: all the sweat and droplets mingled in communion, eight squeezed into a pew meant for five, spinning in all directions to “pass the peace” mid-service with handshakes and smiles and tears and belly laughs.

When Keith and I first met at a prayer meeting that February, we hugged, though we were strangers. Keith and his pregnant wife had sat in folded chairs to ask for healing, just like me. He was thirty-four, an east-coaster like I was with one toddler at home, and he had stage four soft-tissue cancer.

I was twenty-nine, an inter…