Guernsey and my Salvation

I was scrolling through Netflix when one of my favorite movies showed up, Netflix asking if I would like to watch it again. “The Guernsey Literary and Potato Pie Society.” It’s thoughtful, moving, and healing. I’ve watched it several times over the past few years, and I always wait eagerly for this one particular moment.

The movie is about a group of people who live on the Island of Guernsey during and after World War 2. They are a ragtag group of people who experienced unbelievable loss and terror under the hands of the Nazis. Everything that they held dear was torn from them. Their livelihood, their way of life, their people. They lived separate lives until they shared in a secret dinner of pork and potato pie one night, followed by a crazy moment of fear when they suddenly found themselves becoming a book club. Meeting weekly, under candlelight, reading books aloud to each other, followed by rousing discussions. What they discovered as they began to meet is narrated by one of the group members - my favorite moment. He says this: “We were all hungry, but it was Elizabeth who realized our true salvation...for connection, the company of other people, for fellowship.”

Last night I got to thinking more about that statement and how true it is and certainly was, once upon a time, several years back. I had just gotten word of Eva’s accident and was absolutely paralyzed. Nothing in life had prepared me for this moment nor the days and weeks ahead. All that I knew was gone in a blink of an eye. My life, all our lives, had just been turned upside in the most terrible of ways.

It’s a lonely feeling to experience such pain and loss. Even though my family, Dugan, Linds and Phoenix, were impacted the greatest, the pain was still very true for me. It’s true for anyone who has experienced such hurt. And even though it may be a shared pain, it’s still very singular, very personal, very lonely.

But, just like the people in Guernsey, my salvation, too, came in “connection, the company of others, and in fellowship.” One friend would sit with me for however long I cried. Another friend flew in to be by my side. Another sat by her phone to get my call each night as I headed home from the hospital, allowing me all the time I needed to process and grieve. One friend sat in a room outside the PICU for 3 days, just to be near and to pray. A friend called regularly to speak softly and kindly to my soul and my heart, holding some of my grief and pain for a while. And I made a friend who took it upon herself to text me, asking me how I was, assuring me that she was praying for me. At that point, I knew her by name only, but something about her texts reached deep inside of me. And the list goes on.

This Guernsey Literary and Potato Pie Society gang found hope and healing by facing their fears together and choosing to make life as good as it could possibly be. Again, together. They laughed, they cried, they shared, they hoped and they healed.

Pain and loss is a very lonely thing. You anticipate living it all by yourself, until you realize that there’s a whole Potato Pie Society waiting to be formed in order to live through it all with you in order to get to the other side, however long that takes.

I get emotional when I think about those days and certainly struggle at various times these days. But my loneliness was and is short lived because of those around me who save me through their connection, their company and their fellowship.