Who is "just be there" and why is he checking my ego?

This past Friday my wife and I went to Baltimore Maryland for the funeral of a friend. We returned to Ca on Monday and while we were driving home we were enjoying our normal banter which included laughing and trash talking each other when all of a sudden my wife went silent. I mean the kind of deafening silence that makes you wonder if you did or said something wrong. Then in one methodic stroke she peered out the window with her eyes fixated on a particular fast-food resturant. The resturant triggered a fond memory of her deceased mother. Tears followed- lots of them. Then more silence. Then more tears. A tissue. Then more tears and more silence. This continued the rest of the way home, into the house, into her pj's then finally into her beauty sleep for the night. In my attempt to be sensative to her moment I asked if there was anything I could do to help her or serve her. Her reply was simple, "no baby, this just is what it is. Im all right."

Huh? 20 minutes of tears, silence then sleep and it "is what it is" and you're "all right?" You serious?! Can I get a little more? I mean we were right in the middle of a great laugh and all of a sudden theres a memory, a fond memory mind you, and the intimacy of 'our' moment vanishes like a vapor over a teapot?! Is that all the explanation there is? Well, gee, yeah, in some cases that is all the explanation there is. It would seem that Im blogging to fuss about that memory being an unsuspecting thief, but Im not. I reliving this moment because during the ride home I touched my own feelings of inadequecies. I hated noticing it in the car and I hate acknowledging it while I type, but I was absolutely powerless to aiding my wife through her moment. I held her hand, I offered her tissues, I gave her a hug, and even kissed her forehead and nothing I did shook the fog that beheld her. I simply didn't have the stuff to ease it. I tried to earn the heros chair by trying every "technique" I knew to help the situation but in the end I failed. In that moment I realized that my efforts weren't going to work, and what an ego shot to realize that in somethings we are going to be virtually powerless to fix. What do you do when you do everything and it still doesn't satisfy?

This realization made me feel stripped of a chance to be her knight in shining armor and left "being there" my only recourse to assist in whatever was going on. Who is "being there" and why does he have so much power?! Well, first let me tell you that "being there" is powerful and has God all on it. It is the power of allowing God's presence on your life to be the calming affect on someone elses. Gods presence give's a peace that can't be told, taught or understood and the only prerequisite to making "being there" work is actually "being" instead of "doing." Yes, thats right, I became more of a support when I shut my mouth and calmed my actions and allowed my presence to be my answer. Yea, I get it, its not much of an ego tease when we don't do anything to fix a situation but some situations call for us to "be" instead of "do." This way God gets the glory and not you...

So you want to know what I learned that night. I learned that God wanted to personally wipe my wife's tears away, comfort her and put her to sleep and that my ego almost got in the way of that. Wow...
How many times do we get in the way of God doing God stuff because our ego's rush us to an action that God is not calling us to do? How many times do we "do" when God wants us to just "be?"
What are you working too hard at?
Thats what I think...