I absolutely adore this Caedmon's Call song... I first fell in love with it when my dear friend, my roommate Heidi's brother was in a crazy intense and life-threatening bike accident a few years ago. By God's grace alone he overcame so many negative prognoses and is now, incredibly, studying to be a prosthetic-orthotic technician at George Brown College in Toronto.

It was early in November of 2004 when we got the news. What I remember most about the weeks following is being overwhelmed by my grief, my concern, my fears, and my worry. Being so far from Eric while his life hung in the balance had me feeling all kinds of uselessness. My roommate at the time, Sarah (also a friend of Eric's) and I got quite resourceful in our letter and e-mail writing during Eric's long hospital stay, even making audio tapes of us reading children's books and playing songs on the guitar to brighten his long, pain-filled days. Eventually, in early January, we finally bucked up and flew out to see him (which was, incidentally, when I first met Heidi).

This Caedmon's Call song "Love Alone" had never really held any intense meaning for me, but during this season of my life it became full of implications and significance. I held it close to me as a small representative of the many thoughts I was struggling through. But in that time, my biggest cry to God was this: "Why does it hurt SO much to care for others? Why must it hurt so bad?"

There are so many things that those around us can do to break our hearts, and if we chose to love, then we must know that we may someday feel the full strain of loss, or regret; disappointment, or grief. It will not always be their fault; Eric certainly didn't mean to cause anyone pain when his motorcycle was hit by an inattentive driver in 2004; our pain was borne from our love of him. I think it is a righteous, holy grief, the kind that splits your heart when you long for those you love and care about to know and love Jesus, but they don't, and they won't; when you see your best friend's family fall to pieces when you're 9; when someone you love (or someone someone you love loves) takes their own life. When you don't know how to "fix" it, but you want to so bad. And your heart instinctively cries out for someone, anyone, but still always, somehow, that same Someone: "Give me Your hand to hold because I can't stand to love alone."

I have said to much; I should let these words speak for themselves. Read whatever you will; I know that every time I come to them, in every new empty-hearted scenario, they meet me there with something new. Even now they wrap around my particular grief and raise me up to grasp a hem, hovering just above me, but is it low enough? And I am glad that I have reached for it after all.

Love Alone

No one would love me
If they knew all the things I hide
My words fall to the floor
As tears drip through the telephone line

And the hands I’ve seen raised to the sky
Were not waving but drowning all this time
And I try to build the ark that they will need
To float to you upon the crystal sea

Give me Your hand to hold
'Cause I can't stand to love alone
And love alone is not enough to hold us up
We've got to touch Your robe
So swing Your robe down low
Swing Your robe down low

The prince of despair's been beaten
But the loser still fights
Death's on a long leash
Stealing my friends to the night

And everyone cries for the innocent
But You say to love the guilty too
And I'm surrounded by suffering and sickness
So I'm working tearing back the roof

Give me Your hand to hold
'Cause I can't stand to love alone
And love alone is not enough to hold us up
We've got to touch Your robe
So swing Your robe down low
Swing Your robe down low

And the pain of the world is a burden
And it's my cross to bear
And I stumble under all the weight
I know you're Simon standing there
And I know you're standing there

Give me your hand to hold
'Cause I can't stand to love alone
And love alone is not enough to hold us up
We've got to touch Your robe
So swing Your robe down low
Swing Your robe down low


*The part of the song that I have italicized is the part where Jesus echoes are cries and He, in His own human experience, cries with us. I just didn't want you to miss it.