Joy comes in the Morning

About a month ago, at our morning church service, our Chaplain had a goodbye ceremony for Abby with many of our students and parents present. I sat there wanting to cry and looked around as I saw both middle school and high school students with stone wall faces. Though they were completely stoic, it was obvious in their eyes how much they were hurting. I struggled inside and felt my old military kid mantra circulate in my mind “Bekah, you can’t cry it would be unfair of you to break down. That will cause everyone else to break down.” I heard another small voice say “It is okay to be sad. Be honest with yourself.” I would love to say that I then broke down, but I didn’t. I held it together...until out of the silence I heard sobbing from the back of the congregation. I looked back and saw Sally, one of our high schoolers with down syndrome running to the front of the congregation covered in tears with her nose running because of the sobbing. She ran up to Abby and embraced her in both love and sadness. I couldn’t help it. Seeing her being so vulnerable and honest and not even caring about the social rules she was breaking was amazing and moving. Seeing her honesty gave me permission to be honest and so I cried. At first I thought I was the only one that was moved, but as I sat there looking around through my tears I saw my middle school friends and my high school friends crying as well. Some of these students I have been friends with for two years and I have never seen them so unguarded. It was almost as if there was automatic intimacy between both the students and the leaders and together in our tears we were able to acknowledge our loss of a great friend. I realized that it was the honesty of Sally that had broken that barrier with the entire group. She didn’t even have to say anything. She just cried.