And So Fulfill

 Without going into too much detail, I can report that our younger child, who is transgender, has been living in a suburb of Saint Paul for the last year and a half. Per mutual agreement, I am allowed to refer to this young adult, almost 22 years old, as our fabulous queer dragonlet.

So the dragonlet's cell phone died - not "I need to charge my phone" dead, but "I'm going to begin to show the loading screen and then go black again" dead. For eight heart-stopping days, we were not hearing from the dragonlet and getting no response to our attempts to call, text, and email. 

Everything, as it turns out, is fine, and the dragonlet will shortly be equipped with a new, working phone. It's one of those things. 

It was a long eight days.

Somewhere in there - maybe four days in - it occurred to me to activate the bat signal, so to speak. I am blessed with a number of clerical colleagues who live in and around the Twin Cities of Saint Paul-Minneapolis, largely because Minnesota is sort of the domestic holy land for Lutherans. I reached out to a couple of local colleagues privately. Then it finally dawned on me to look up the Lutheran congregation closest to the dragonlet and explain the situation.

Well.

There are one hundred and eight ELCA congregations within a 15-mile radius. As I said - the domestic holy land. I sent an email to the pastor at the one that was closest.

I got a text message: "May I call you?" It wasn't long before we had a wonderful phone call. She was kind enough to identify as a parent of two children about the age of ours (a little younger) - and she was also kind enough to name another connection: she served her internship year at the church where the senior pastor is North Carolina's current bishop. 

Just knowing that I had this pastor-mom carrying my cares in her heart somehow made things better even before we heard from the dragonlet. As the actual Saint Paul, the author of a number of letters in the Bible, writes: "Rejoice with them that do rejoice, and weep with them that weep" (Romans 12:15).

And even though the hubs and I knew that we were never alone in this concern, talking with this pastor reminded me forcefully of one of my very favorite instructions from Scripture: "Bear one another's burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ" (Galatians 6:2).

At a time when the hubs and I were praying that everything was all right, my colleagues, and one colleague in particular, bore my burdens with me. She wept with those who wept, and rejoiced with those who rejoiced.

I might never meet her in person. But she was my sister in Christ when I needed one, badly. 

What happens to me, and to you, when we bear one another's burdens? Even for those of us who help bear burdens for a living, sometimes we are the ones who need help with our own burdens, and it helps to remember that.