Stitching Our Hearts Back Together

David asked, “Is there anyone still left of the house of Saul to whom I can show kindness for Jonathan’s sake?” . . . Ziba answered the king, “There is still a son of Jonathan; he is lame in both feet.” . . . So Mephibosheth ate at David’s table like one of the king’s sons.

—2 Samuel 9:1, 3, 11

There will be a day when it all falls apart. My friend lost her mom this year. Another friend’s marriage ended. A friend I hadn’t talked to in ages called late one Sunday night to ask me how to get through a miscarriage. “The bleeding,” she said, “has already begun.”

These are things I can’t change. Not one of them. Can’t fix, can’t heal, can’t put the broken pieces back together. What I can do is offer myself, wholehearted and present, to walk with the people I love through the fear and the mess. That’s all any of us can do. That’s what we’re here for, the presence, the listening, the praying with and for on the days when it all falls apart, when life shatters in our hands.

The table is where we store up for those days, where we log minutes and hours building something durable and strong that gets tested in those terrible split seconds. And the table is where we return to stitch our hearts back together after the breaking.