Reaching The Hurting Download

GIVE THE GIFT OF PRAYER

The most valuable of all gifts is the gift of prayer but it is the promise of prayer for others that leaves something to be desired.  ‘I’ll pray for you’ is often the quick go-to line when I need to make a quick exit.  It’s the believer’s equivalent to, ‘Have a nice day!’  Does everyone who says, ‘I’ll pray for you’ actually do it or is it just a cliche?

The person who needs it would be very discouraged if they knew that many who promised to pray didn’t do it.  It’s a good thing Jesus prays for us continually.  We are never in a position where we have no one talking to the Father about us.  Jesus sits at His Father’s side at this very moment and is praying for each of us with great detail, with sensitivity, and with divine knowledge.

How valuable is prayer?  The night of Jesus’ arrest, He showed us.  When He was preparing to say goodbye to His disciples for good, He broke into the longest prayer in the Bible.  (John 17)  It’s so weighty that I could spend years meditating on it and not scratch the surface. When my prayers sound like, “Jesus, please be near them and bless them”, I realize these are okay but at some point, there should be more content.  I must be in the Word so that I have food from my own reservoir to give to others.  Scripture fuels my prayers with substance and fire.

Guidelines are helpful. Here are a few from personal experience and from hanging around other intercessors.

• Ask the one you are praying for, ‘What is it you need from God?’  Listen before praying.  It should never be guesswork.
• Ask God to lead you to the right scriptures to undergird your prayers.  Put their names in the passage.
• Write a note and share the scriptures directly with them. They will not only feel the strength but feel the love in the effort.
• If possible, and if they’re open, offer to pray for them in person.  This is best!  Pray their story. Let them hear you verbalize to God why they need prayer and what they’re feeling.  Be sure to end your prayers with God’s promises!
• Say their name throughout the prayer and if the relationship warrants it, touch them.  Hold their hand, put your hand on their arm or shoulder.  This is the only tenderness some will ever experience.

Finally, I am often curious enough to ask the one who has asked me to pray for them, if they are also praying for themselves.  It’s easy to peg someone else as the spiritual guru who will do what I’m too lazy to do for myself.  I may pose a similar question to someone who continually asks me for advice.  I’ll inquire, “What is God telling you about it?”  Corrie Ten Boom quote ~  “Dear Jesus…how foolish of me to have called for human help when You are here.”  

Lord, You know that effective prayer takes time. I give you the time I’ll spend praying today. How should I invest it?  I’m a steward of my days and I need help knowing whose spiritual soil is tilled and ready.  Amen

Isaiah said, “At this my body is racked with pain, pangs seize me, like those of a woman in labor.  I am staggered by what I hear, I am bewildered by what I see.”  You can relate, right?  If you’ve been through a tragedy, you know how Isaiah felt.  You think you must be dreaming and you’ll wake up to breathe a sigh of relief.  The truth seems surreal. It leaves you staggered, confused, bewildered. You say to yourself, “This just can’t be true.”

I remember the morning my mother died.  It came unexpectedly.  I was visiting home for the weekend with my daughter, Jaime. The night before Mom died, we had enjoyed an evening where she had unexplainable energy.  So much so ~ that we planned an outing for the next day.  The following morning, I was standing at the stove making scrambled eggs.  The english muffins were under the broiler, table was set, coffee was made, and Dad remarked how surprised he was that Mom had overslept.  He offered to go check on her.  I heard his footsteps come down the hall on his way back from her room and will never forget the look on his face as he said, “She’s gone.”  Immediately, I felt lightheaded. My ears were ringing. I couldn’t think clearly and his words sounded distant. It took days, even weeks, for me to feel somewhat normal again.  Such is the experience of living through a physical reaction to shock. God graciously made us this way because the truth of the moment is too heavy to internalize.  He will allow it to come in waves, a little at a time, so that our body, heart, and mind can adjust to a new reality.  I’m sure Dad was experiencing a similar fog.

I can forget this when I visit someone in a hospital after an accident or I remember how well I thought someone was doing at a memorial service.  “They held up well,” I’ll say as I recount how they stood in a receiving line and greeted everyone without breaking down in tears.  The truth was, they were operating beneath a shock system that would wear off long after the event was over.  Later on, when they really needed me, I had gone on with my life.  I had mistaken their initial composure for lack of need.  No one escapes grief.  No one is beyond needing others no matter how things may appear.

After a tragedy, be sure to reach out later on, three months later, even a year later.  Send another card, bring a meal, pay another visit.  Truth be told, the person may not even remember you being there in the first days of the crisis.  How can you start your conversation?  “I’ve been thinking of you so much. I know the months after an awful event can be harder than the first few weeks.  The adjustment must be, at times, overwhelming.”  This gives them freedom to agree and talk about it.

Joseph Bayly, an author, lost three of his seven children to leukemia.  He wrote in his book, The View From a Hearse, this ~ “We experience the death of loved ones, not at the funeral, but when we come upon a pair of their old shoes.”  Will you and I be there when future waves of grief come?  God gives them the gift of a shock system initially but then needs to comfort them through the hands of His comforters.  That’s us.  We have our own personal Comforter inside to guide us.

VALIDATE!  DON’T HUMOR!

Like apples of gold in settings of silver is a word spoken in right circumstances.  Like an earring of gold and an ornament of fine gold is a wise reprover to a listening ear.  Proverbs 25:11-12

Jesus was a truth teller and Jesus didn’t sugar coat it.  He told it the way it needed to be told.  But He was Truth and He was also Grace so He knew perfectly how to marry the two.  I can call myself a lover of truth but, then in situations where my gift of mercy goes askew, I sometimes tone the truth down so that it isn’t more painful than it has to be.  In some cases, like in the following story with my mother, I could have easily invalidated what was true.

My mother had been battling cancer for more than a year.  She was painfully thin.  Nonetheless, on a weekend when our family was able to visit, she insisted on making the effort to go to church with us.  My mother, not a complainer about anything and prone to suffer silently to a fault, surprised me when she blurted out in frustration.  She had put on her favorite dress, looked at herself in the mirror, and said to me as I stood in the doorway, “Look at me!  I’m a bag of bones in this dress.”  I wanted so much to protest.  “No, no, Mom.  You look beautiful in the dress.”  I caught myself before answering poorly.  I said, “I’m sorry you don’t look like you want to look in the dress.  These changes have to be horribly painful and I’m so sorry.”  

A believer in the midst of a very painful journey usually has a clear vision of this world.  What was once murky gray has become black and white.  What is frivolous doesn’t appeal.  What is most important becomes most precious.  And in the process of seeing life more clearly than most everyone else, they make truthful statements about life, Christianity, people, and religion that are usually true.  Their statements sound blunt and stark. Our first reaction is to protest, to soften it, thinking we are lessening the pain of what they’re vocalizing.  However, in protesting, we are not helping.  We are making it worse by accentuating their feelings of isolation.  Even if the truth was said in anger, there are ways we can validate them without matching their angst.  Not without prayerful wisdom though.  Jesus will give us words that smooth their ragged edges with grace.

God values truth and I should value truth and affirm it when it is spoken.  At times it will make me squirm.  It will challenge the common everyday deception that stares me in the face that I don’t see yet because I haven’t walked in their shoes.  Their statements will most often depict the hopelessness of this world, the futility of living life poorly, and can sound like the ‘last word’ of the day.  But after listening, after offering empathy first before words, after giving a creative gift, and laying a foundation of true friendship, there will be a time for me to frame their truthful words with the ‘hope that lies before us.’

Lord, I don’t want to fill the air with my words.  I want apples of gold to come forth – truth with grace, truth with mercy.  Amen

NETWORK WITH OTHER SURVIVORS

Our healing is never just for us. “God comforts us in all our afflictions so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affiliation with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.  If we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation; or if we are comforted, it is for your comfort.  II Corinthians 1:4-6

Paul, through every persecution he endured, found perspective and strength knowing that his suffering was more than just about Him.  It was too know Jesus better but it was also to help others.  The only way he, or I, can ever empathize with another person is to have gone through the same thing ourselves.  Human beings are intuitive creatures and we know when someone is speaking to us beyond their ability to understand.  The words sound hollow and the wisdom is usually trite.

If the best one to reach someone in pain is another who has survived the same pain, that should give me direction in knowing how to reach out to people I love with whom I can’t relate.  If I have not experienced what they are enduring, there is someone not too far away who has.  My role would be to network them.  Introduce them.  Plan a lunch or an afternoon just to hang out.  The survivor will quickly discern the needs of the one who is currently in the fire.

Each of us suffers but we have never suffered in all the ways one can suffer.  I don’t know how to relate to another mother who has a child with cancer.  I don’t know how to reach out to parents who are grieving their grown children’s sexuality.  I may not know how to truly empathize with someone who is surviving domestic violence.  I know that my encouragement can only go so far.  Knowing that, I ask God to do what only He can do by bringing someone to mind, to bring another child of God across my path who has endured a similar thing.  The resource may not even be a flesh and blood person, but a book.  God knows what they need.

For every kind of pain, there is a specific kind of comfort only God can fashion through the life of a saint who has walked this road before.  People who haven’t been through pain and suffering don’t usually write books about pain and suffering!  It would be a dry treatise and no help to anyone.  To take this further, if you have been through something awful with your faith in tact, if you have dug deeply into Christ for the treasures of wisdom, you have an audience.  Someone is waiting for you.  Someone is praying that someone like you exists to help them.  You can come to see the miraculous. What is that?  To experience what it’s like to see something that has been so bitter to your soul take on bittersweet properties.  Eventually, maybe even more sweet than bitter.

Network, network, network.  There is someone out there who is the answer to someone else’s prayer.  Maybe it’s you.

Bring your church together for purposes beyond what we’ve ever experienced.  Amen

CREATE A MILESTONE

A milestone is anything I can put on my hurting friend’s calendar that, when they see it, will  cause them to say, “I can make it until July  because I’ll get to go do ‘that’.’  The ‘that’ could be a picnic, a lunch, a concert, a trip.  The power of a milestone can’t be underestimated.

My sister, Nancy, spent some time in medical school on the island of Grenada during the time my mother was battling cancer.  For those of you near or around my age, you probably recall what happened in the early 80’s with the events on Grenada.  There was an attempted ‘coup’ on the island, widespread bloodshed, and the students and faculty of the American Medical School there were in harms way.  There was a short window of time for our military to go in and evacuate the several hundred Americans.  My sister was one of the last to board a military chopper inside the hot zone.  She had been trapped on another part of the island with a few other students and it took a while for our soldiers to find them and secure the area.   All this time, our family was glued to the news programs, waiting to see pictures of my sister getting off the C140 airlift plane at Fort Bragg, NC.  Finally, days after the evacuation started, she made it.

I’d like to tell you what was happening to my mother.  Her health and strength had regressed and she spent much of her days sleeping.  However, when Nancy was scheduled to come home, her strength revived.  The morning my sister was to arrive by plane, my mother got up, showered, put on a nice outfit, and looked/acted completely healthy.  She not only went to the airport but kept up (for a time) with all the celebrations and outings that were given in honor of my Nancy’s homecoming.  How could she do that?  Because of the power of a milestone.  It was life giving.

What is it you can plan for someone who is declining, one who is losing hope?  Maybe it’s to keep a single mother’s child for a day or a weekend.  Maybe it’s to take someone who is housebound on a long drive through the country.  Maybe it’s to take a music lover to a symphony.  Maybe it’s to treat someone to a nice lunch at their favorite restaurant.  Maybe it’s to take someone suffering from Alzheimers on a walk outdoors.  We take for granted the freedom to get out of the house, get some fresh air and feel energized.  The goal is to offer something that will help someone in decline, physically or emotionally, rally for a time because they have something to look forward to.

The Apostle Paul told the church leaders at Ephesus these parting words.  “In all things I have shown you that by working hard in this way we must help the weak and remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he himself said, ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’”  Acts 20:36   To remember the weak, the frail, the sick, the orphans and widows…we are not only inviting the favor of God on our lives but we bestow the favor of God on theirs!  When the milestone is behind them, it is not over for them.  They re-live it as a defining moment when God’s presence intersected their lives at a time when they probably felt forgotten.

Lord, show me what to do and for whom to do it.  Amen

GIVE CREATIVE GIFTS

Some years ago, I recall reading about a professional violinist named Ed Stanistreet. As he aged, arthritis crippled his fingers, causing him to lose agility and technical ability.  He retired from the symphony but didn’t lay down his instrument.  He loved music and knew its ability to touch people.  So, several mornings a week, he’d board a bus in downtown Philadelphia, go to the local hospital, take the elevator up to the neonatal floor, and play for the preemies. No matter our age, no matter our challenges, no matter our financial constraints, there are always things we can do to reach out and touch others.

When my mother lived out her two year battle with cancer, I was blessed to live less than two hours away and could visit her every few weeks. On those days, I made a habit of stopping at a store in upstate New York called The Silver Strawberry.  It was the place to go if you needed silk or dried flowers, baskets, pots and mosses.  My mother liked to go and browse there, often coming home with the makings for a small flower arrangement.  When she was no longer able to easily leave the house, I created a ritual for our visits.  I’d stop at the store on the way to visit her and purchase everything we’d need to create an arrangement together.  This became our shared experience for the day.  She’d have the coffee ready when I pulled in the yard.  As she became too weak to participate, she’d take a nap, I’d make the arrangement by myself, and watch her face get excited when it was time to see it.

Creative gifts do more than make momentary impacts.  The meaning attached to the gifts can give strength for days and years to come.  As you read and think about all of this, consider the interests of the person you’re trying to encourage.  What is their favorite artist, classical composer, garden flower, painter, dessert choice, even fresh fruit choice when the growing season is right?  Oftentimes, our best creative gift originates from our natural or spiritual giftedness.  I consider the value of David’s gift to a tormented King Saul.  I Sam. 16  “Whenever the harmful spirit from God was upon Saul, David took the lyre and played it with his hand.  So Saul was refreshed and was well, and the harmful spirit departed from him.  How unique was that!  Music was then, and still is, a way to bring God’s whispers to hurting souls without a need for words. Being a musician, I have sung over the phone to someone more than a half dozen times or brought my flute to play at someone’s bedside.

Any kind of gesture, big or small, prompted by the Spirit of God, will be accompanied by the Spirit’s energizing work and power.  If my idea is birthed and bathed in prayer, it has the potential to leave someone feeling that Jesus, Himself, has come personally to express His love to them.  Whether a pretty mug with a peach tea bag in it, a poem, or a well-timed prayer, God is hoping we will really believe that we are His hands and feet.

You are a creative God.  Help me think and pray outside the box. Bless even what feels radical.  Amen

REACH OUT IN PRIVATE

We are most free when away from the public eye.  When someone really touches another’s heart, they do it in private when their defenses are down.  The problem is, we rarely reach out to each other privately.  We’re accustomed to meeting up across the sanctuary, or in a lobby, or in a grocery store.  We ask the other person how they are doing and assure them we have been thinking about them and praying for them.  It is only mildly comforting.  Those same words would have been so much more effective if we’d put them in a card and mailed it, or delivered a batch of muffins to their door and spoken the same words.

In 1982, my mother was diagnosed with inoperable cancer.  A year later, Ron’s mother dropped dead unexpectedly and mine lost her battle with cancer nine months later.  We said goodbye to both mothers within a year of each other.  Our loss was staggering.  We were young and both unequipped to know how to walk that journey which included grieving.

One morning, I was home vacuuming and the phone rang.  It was an older woman from our congregation whom I had seen on Sunday.  She usually made a habit of speaking to me.  On this weekday though, she made an unforgettable gesture and offered enduring words. This is what she said.  “I was going about my day, Christine, and it hit me that you and Ron are losing both your mothers at the same time.  I stopped what I was doing to take that in. That’s crushing and so much to deal with for a young married couple.  I don’t have any magic words but I wanted you to know that I noticed, I am hurting with you, and I care.”   I thanked her, I was awkward, but oh did it mean a lot to me.  Here’s the thing ~ if she had said those same things in the church lobby the Sunday before, it wouldn’t have made the impact it did on a Tuesday because she had stopped her routine, thought about us, and made the effort to reveal that.

Some things can only be done effectively in private.  I think about Joseph who was overcome by the sight of his brothers after so many years apart.  He was Vice-chancellor of Egypt but they didn’t yet know it was him.  Joseph was trying to contain his emotions at the sight of them; understandable since they were the very ones who had treated him cruelly and sold him into slavery.  So he excused himself from the feast and here’s the verse that references it.  Genesis 43:30  Then Joseph hurried out, for his compassion grew warm for his brother, and he sought a place to weep.  So he entered his chamber and wept there.

Why do I reach out to others publicly?  It’s safe, convenient, and emotionally protective but it shouldn’t be about me.   The most honest pain someone else feels is what they feel in private. When they are approached there, I will probably access their authentic selves and the part of them that is potentially raw.  I need to know that I don’t have to eloquent, just real.

So make a note on Sunday of who it is that needs encouragement and send yourself a text reminder.  Then, ask God how to express love and care sometime that week. The sky’s the limit for ways to reach the heart where Jesus can leave His imprint.

How many people did you talk to privately?  You waited until they were alone – even the Samaritan woman at the well.  You risked both your reputations.  Guide my creativity as I think of being more vulnerable and personal.  Amen