Wednesday of the Fifth Week of Lent - March 24, 2021

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Daniel 3:14-20, 91-92, 95 John 8:31-42

Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego. Three boys cast into the white-hot furnace.

Kevin, Shaun and Ryan. Drowning. Suicide. Suicide.

Three boys, my brothers, died by tragedies. One an accident. The other two some unfortunate combination of mental health, depression, improper medication oversight.

While in this story Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego are the ones thrown into the fire, anyone who has suffered great loss feels they’re the ones who have been hurled straight into hell along with seismic grief, helplessness and despair.

Visitation held a memorial Mass for Ryan, who went to school here. In meeting with the priest to plan his service, my sister, Shannon Pryor, and I were told, “You are heroes for people you don’t even know.” I could barely sleep at night for my racing mind, or get out of bed in the morning so badly did my body ache from grief. The simplest decisions exhausted me. The idea of being a hero to anyone was laughable. Even worse was the idea that people were watching us live this train wreck. Again.

And yet God walked in the middle of it. He was there in the meals prepared by friends; in the cards that came in the mail for weeks; in those who stopped by and listened, cried and laughed; in neighbors who shared stories of the boys. He was in all the people who carried us in those days, weeks and months after the boys died. And he continues to walk alongside in the quiet moments when a memory brings one of them so close it’s as if they’re here again.

I was attending a photography workshop in Washington State two years ago when I received word that a good friend had found her son dead by suicide in his bedroom. I called her immediately and we cried deep and growling sobs—the only sounds that can be put to such loss. In that conversation she told me, “I know I can survive this because I’ve seen you do it.”

And that, too, is God—using whomever is at hand in order to help someone through their worst.

Q: How in your life has tragedy been overcome by God’s love? How did God use others, or use you, as a means of showing his mercy?

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