In the thick of it...

 I remember the day he kissed me on the way home from day camp.

He was tall and skinny and pasty white.

I don't even remember what we talked about.

But we kind of got each other.

There's this unspoken thing between sensitive types.

We operate at a different frequency.

You can see it in the eyes if you pay attention.

Many years later I ran into him.

At church.

He was married and had a beautiful baby boy.

His eyes were still the same.

Yet different.

We didn't talk much.

But that shared look was still there.

It's not a look of the romantic kind.

Anyone who has ever felt the weight of existing...

or the way that sometimes just thinking and feeling is too much...

you know the look.

The one that says, "I am in the trenches, too. I see you."

Many years after that, he hung himself.

It has haunted me.

Maybe not in the way that it has haunted those closer to him...

but I am haunted just the same.

Whenever I am in the trenches,

I think of him.

I pray that he has found peace in the arms of Jesus.

Be kind to those who are suffering.

That is a heavy weight to carry alone.