Patient and Kind

Imagine, if you will, that you get that phone call that is probably the worst nightmare of any parent. It’s the police and your son has been killed. Immediately, obviously, you’re filled with overwhelming grief, pain and agony. There’s probably a fair amount of disbelief and doubt. You tell yourself, ‘This must be a dream.’ A nightmare, really.
But then imagine that it’s not that your son was just killed, but brutally murdered. He was abused and violated before he was murdered. Now, along with all the pain and hurt you’re feeling, there is a huge weight of anger and even rage.
I don’t think any of us can quite imagine what that would be like. Personally, I can’t even imagine just losing a child, no matter what the circumstances. In fact, just thinking of those who have lost a child leads me to want to just hug you. But I don’t think any of us have lost a child in such a brutal way. That tragedy is almost unimaginable.
But it happens, right? The unimaginable becomes reality for some parents. And none of us would be able to probably say how we’d respond but, I believe, it’s those unimaginable moments that lead us to rely on our deepest spiritual and emotional being.
And what I mean is that we can often go two different ways in response to such a tragedy, and I think I can understand both responses. In the book “Dead Man Walking”, Sister Helen Prejean writes of her experience with an inmate on death row. And what sticks out most in her book is who the sister calls the ‘hero’ of it. And that is Lloyd Leblanc, the father of a young man murdered by this inmate.
And he’s the hero here because of his response to such a tragedy. While we could understand if he was angry, hurt, even vengeful, it’s harder for us to understand his forgiveness, even his grace. Though this criminal took his son’s life in a brutal way, he didn’t respond in vengeance toward the murderer like others did. Even while others would throw meat and other garbage at this murderer’s mother, Lloyd was willing to go and visit her, even bringing her a basket of food.
In 1 Corinthians 13, Paul writes, “Love is patient, love is kind.” Now, we might know what those mean on the surface, but their depths explains how patience is withholding negative actions toward another, while kindness is expressing positive actions toward them. They are opposites of the same coin.
Lloyd Leblanc is patient by withholding his anger and vengeance toward this murderer, even someone who killed his son. And he is kind by reaching out to the mother when it would be easy to simply avoid or even attack her. I wonder, are we willing to not just be patient, but express kindness toward others in our life? God bless.