Tag: encouragement

Burden bearing

~ Kristin ~ 1 Comment

“I don’t want to bother you with my issues.”

Ever said that?

I mean, who wants to share their troubles with the people around them?  Do you really want to hear about my health issues, or my financial difficulty, or my stress at work?  I am sure you have enough problems of your own.  You don’t need me dragging you further into the gutter.

Haven’t you said these things inside your head?  Or even out loud?

Surely we’ve been taught from our childhood, “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.”  We are supposed to smile, say nice things, and put the best construction on everything.  Right?

Yes, and…then there’s the Bible.

Galatians 6:2

Bear one another’s burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ.

Here’s the thing, I don’t mind carrying your burdens, but I really don’t want you carrying mine.  Right? I mean we all want to rush to the rescue when a friend is in the hospital, or lost a parent, or needs help moving, but we really don’t want to invite anyone in to help us when the basement floods, or our kids are sick, or (gasp) we can’t do everything that we used to be able to do.

But Paul, in Galatians, says, to bear one another’s burdens.  That implies reciprocity.

I think I have established through this blog that I have most of my life been pretty self-sufficient.  I can do it myself, thank you very much.  I don’t need anyone’s help.  I kick butts and take names and God help you if you get in my way.  Notice I said ‘most’ of my life.  For the past couple of years I have been learning a new way.

Last May, at the very end of our school year, as a result of medications I had been taking, I contracted ocular herpes.  Yes, herpes. In my eyes.  (My teenaged daughter who drove me to the eye doctor got a kick out of that.)  Let me just say here that it is miserable.  Other than the itching, burning, and aching of my eyes, they were extremely sensitive to light, so I could not drive for a few days.   During that time, we were having end of year faculty meetings and a faculty luncheon at a restaurant a bit of a distance from the school and from my house.  My daughter dropped me off at school in the morning, but I needed a ride to the restaurant and then from the restaurant to my eye doctor and from the eye doctor to my house, which happened to be in the opposite direction of anyone I worked with.

So, self-sufficient me decided to ask my friend, who lives with severe rheumatoid arthritis, if I could ride with her to the luncheon and then if she would drop me at my eye doctor which was not terribly far out of her way.  She said that would be fine.  I then figured out how I could take public transportation from the eye doctor to my house.  I had done this before, it was no big deal, and it allowed me to be self-sufficient.

But, after the luncheon, my friend took me to the eye doctor and insisted on staying with me and driving me home afterward.  I didn’t want to burden her.  By that time in the day, I knew that we both needed some rest and this would add an hour or more to her day, and to her driving.  But she said to me, “this is something I can do.”  And although it was admitting that I couldn’t do everything by myself, I knew at that moment that I was allowing her into my need.

After the decision to ‘allow her’ to help me, I was so thankful that she was there.  She sat and had coffee with me before my appointment time, and even helped me select the glasses that I now wear.  She drove me to my front door and then headed home.

It was a small thing, driving me home, wasn’t it?  Not really.  It was a big thing for me.  It was a symbol.  It was my admission that I need others, and in that need, I am blessed.  And, you know, I think she was blessed, too.

I know that I am blessed when others allow me into their mess, allow me to walk with them for a minute or a mile, allow me to shoulder part of the burden.  Why would I deprive someone else of joining me in mine?  Mostly because I’m a proud butt-kickin’, name-takin’ soldier.  Or, I was.  Anybody can change.

John 15:13

Greater love has no one than this; to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.

Yay! Wednesday!!

~ Kristin ~ Leave a comment

It’s Wednesday.  You know what that means — Bible study.

I am not sure why I feel such a draw to this group, but I do.  Perhaps it’s the sequence of events that led me to these ladies (see “One Thing Leads to Another” if you are interested).  Maybe it’s the fact that this is the first group in Ann Arbor that is ‘mine’, not my husband’s.  Maybe it’s the fact that the actual study we are doing is pretty spot-on relevant to my life at the moment.  But I want you to know that after five weeks I am scheduling trips, appointments,  and (potential) work around it.

Twenty-one ladies if we are all there.  That’s a pretty large group, so I don’t know everyone yet.  There are typically 16-18 in attendance, and we had been keeping our discussion time all together in one large group, so some people didn’t speak (or have a turn to speak).  Last week we broke into two discussion groups and that allowed for more of the ladies to speak and be heard.  We decided to shuffle the groups each week so that we could all get to know one another.

What’s weird is that the group has been going for, I don’t know, eight or nine years and I don’t feel like a newbie or like I don’t belong.  I was welcomed right in as one of the family.  That’s it.  That’s why I am so drawn to this group.  They didn’t look at me suspiciously and wonder how I was going to change the group.  They embraced me.  Literally and figuratively.  And I like it!

I’m not the only one who is drawn to this group, of course.  Some of these ladies have to overcome enormous obstacles just to attend every week.  One is caring for her husband who has Alzheimer’s — she has to arrange for someone to come into the house and stay with him while she is gone.  Another had a major car accident last summer and is just now beginning to walk with just a cane; she has been there every week except the week of her brother’s funeral! Another has some kind of problem with her eyesight; she has to arrange a ride each week.  One dear woman drives herself, parks in the spot marked with handicapped sign, and then takes ten minutes with her walker to get to her designated spot around the table.  One has three school-aged children. You get the point.  These women are committed to getting to this group!

And you can almost feel the “Ahhhhhhhh!” each releases as she walks through the door and finds her place at the table.  Our leader makes a point to spread a tablecloth over the two plastic folding churchy banquet tables.  Sometimes someone brings a bouquet of flowers to put in the center.  One gal brings cookies or muffins to share; another brings some type of fruit.  We have decorative paper plates and mismatched napkins.  An urn of coffee and another of hot water are at the ready.

We pray collectively, with each given an opportunity to lift her burden or the burden of someone else.  We discuss the study we have completed through the week inserting relevant (or not so relevant) commentary.  We watch our video lesson.  We chat and hug and say goodbye until next week.

It’s a refueling station. Each woman determines to get herself there by 9:30 am so that she can leave refreshed 11:30 am, ready to face whatever is in her path for the next six days and twenty-two hours.  And although I am not facing much in my own path at the moment, I definitely need the refueling.  Ahhhhhhh….Wednesday.

Hebrews 10:24

And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works,

not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some,

but encouraging one another…

Pass the oxygen

~ Kristin ~ 1 Comment

I Thessalonians 5:11

Encourage one another and build one another up,

just as you are doing.

Have you ever had someone affirm you?  I’m talking about someone coming directly to you in the middle of your day, looking you in the eyes, and saying, “that thing that you do, that you think no one is noticing you doing, you really do that so well that it has a positive impact on my life.”  I hope you have!  It has happened to me a couple of times recently.  It has been as though someone has noticed me lying on the floor gasping for air, and they have run directly over to me, and placed an oxygen mask on me. Their words have filled me will life-giving breath.

I have had the opportunity to pass the oxygen along, too.  I wish I could say it was always intentional.  Sometimes it is, but often I am surprised. I make a comment in casual conversation like, “wow, you handled that so well!” Suddenly the listener’s eyes fill with tears and she says something like, “thank you for saying that.”  What?  What did I say? Why are you crying?  A comment jumps out of my mouth and it fuels the listener.

But recently a few people in my life have taken the time to write to me, pointing out something very specific I did that made an impact on their lives.  One person called me and elaborated on something I said and how it touched her.  What?  You took time out of your life to do that for me?

Maybe these people haven’t noticed that I am mostly hanging out at my house in my pajamas, drinking coffee and tea, meeting other ladies for lunch, and cooking gluten-, soy-, dairy-, and corn-free foods.  Maybe they haven’t noticed that my days are far from remarkable.

But they did take the time to notice some of my words.  Then, they took the time to use some of their own words to breathe life into me.  They didn’t leave me alone at this time when I might be tempted to feel very lonely and unimportant and inconsequential.  They listened to a still small voice that nudged them to encourage me and build me up.

And let me tell you, these small acts are contagious.  They cause me to notice the little things that others are doing and remark on them — the woman I met recently who is caring for her husband who has ALS and is also reaching out to her neighbor and inviting her into her home to study the Bible, the young mother I know who is scheduling time for mommy-daughter days with her eleven-year-old, the friend who, while battling her own health issues, is seeing to the needs of everyone else in her family.  Because I have been oxygenated, I am able to say to these women “you are remarkable; what you are doing is amazing.”   It’s like I can see them take in the breath.  Their cheeks pink up a bit.  They sigh.

Try it.  You’re gonna like it.