Compassion:

This post has been in my draft folder for ages. In reviewing it, I wonder why I left it in drafts.

Briefing over the gist of my morning pages this morning:

I have a friend whose father is suffering one calamity after another in intensive care right now. She is agonizing over his care. She is very focused on the medical team in charge of him. And, naturally, her situation calls to mind my own unburied pain from the year my father died. We are very different people, my friend and I. That is okay. In fact, that what my pages were about: the need we have to be understood, not judged.

A third person entered in. Another woman who has been shouldered with the responsibility of caring for her mother-in-law. She speaks to me often about the situation. I think it may be because she finds acceptance and compassion from me and she can say what she is feeling without meeting with any condemnation. She can tell me that she resents the responsibility as she complains about one more time that she has had to take care of a doctors appointment.

It is okay to say, "I'm tired." "The time this takes out of my life keeps me from doing things I need to do for myself!" Caregivers often don't even have the time to take a bath. I sat by my dad's bedside the day he had surgery and I held his hands all day to keep him from pulling out his IV lines and I couldn't go to the bathroom! "I wish so-and-so would do more." Of course we do! It is the most honestly selfish thing most of us can say. If so-and-so would do more, then we could do less. This is the way we deal with being a care-giver. And it helps so much to have somebody who isn't too busy to take the time to listen, to accept hearing, "I'm not strong enough to do this!" or, even, as I have heard said, "I hate doing this!" And why isn't it okay to say that, to voice it? Truth be told--all of us must hate doing this! What is to love about it? "I love going to the hospital and sitting by my father's bedside and watching him suffer!"? No, nobody could ever say that! So, society insists that must couch it, we must suppress our emotions and say nothing at all--that is the painful norm that saddles us with guilt, the suppressed anger and emotion. To say, "I'm not strong enough," doesn't mean that you aren't bringing what strength you have to the table. It means you want more strength! It would be so healing to be able to say it. To grumble about how horrible it is--because it is! But the heart that is open understands just exactly what is really being said and can reflect back the right emotion.

Yes, I hated it! I hated my failure and my shortcomings, my lack of knowledge, my lack of energy, my lack of bladder control! Beneath the surface are all the broiling emotions, "He is in pain and he is suffering and I must be able to relieve his suffering!" It is pure baggage. I had a book that was recommended to me called (forgive me, I gave it away some time ago) The Thirty-Six Hour Day. I loved that title! It was honest. All those frightened emotions are very real and honesty is not a bad thing: "I don't really know what to do!" "I can't seem to pray at times like this." "Is everything being done that can be done? What haven't I thought of?" In the aftermath, several ideas have occurred to me. "Should I say something about this? Is this normal?" Minds get stretched at times like that and later we second guess ourselves and our judgment of ourselves is always too harsh. Guilt saddles us over what we could not have done. We dry up and we blow away--we lose our selves in trying to help somebody we love who is helpless and hurting. Then forever after we carry guilt for natural unvoiced emotions. And the only way to put ourselves back together is to have some sympathy for ourselves.

Resentments! The thing is--he is sick, dadgummit! I resent that! And I can't make him better! I resent that! I need more energy, more knowledge, more imagination, more patience, more hands . . .

*I have diverged from my original five page rant!*

My point was that we each deal with things differently but everything we do springs from our emotions. And every person involved in the care of that person also has their own baggage, their own weighty emotions. And these different emotional states and needs don't necessarily play off of each other evenly for the best teamwork to support the sufferer. We actually divide and we don't support each other. Society puts a burden on us, a societal norm. But we aren't emotionless machines! From all these different directions come burdens. Some of us are stronger, some weaker, some more energetic, some exhausted, some more knowledgeable, some clueless--but surely at such a time we often don't feel we are enough! We aren't! And people often back up this norm by being impatient with us for agonizing over whatever we are agonizing over. It hurts! I will take these scars to my grave.

A compassionate ear is a great gift. The more honesty they can have, the more likely they are to see that they deserve their own sympathy for their own shortcomings. Because only God could do what we want to be able to do at such a time!