Acknowledge

"What is your word for the year?" This is the first year I think I have hear that question and it seems to be popping up everywhere. I like the concept, actually. I like it much better than New Years resolutions, which are almost always self-improvement based and self-focused in a superficial sort of way and are usually along the lines of weight loss and eating better and exercising more to the end of greater health and youth and beauty.

The word for the year is different. Seven years ago I came close to the concept when I wrote Not a Resolution but a Prayer, about my desire to be able to actually rejoice with those who rejoice. Mourning is really easy for me. Rejoicing with another, especially when I don't have occasion to myself, is a bit of a challenge.

A few years later I had another concept for the year: Listen. It wasn't necessarily something I publicized but more something I tried to do more of. I learned a lot about listening and the truth that, as David Augsburger says, "Being heard is so close to being loved that for the average person, they are almost indistinguishable." Even this past year I heard about another term, vigilant listening, which took my desire to listen to others and for the skill to hear others, to a whole new level.

When the question about the word for the year came up, I rebelled and decided I wouldn't get with the program. I couldn't come up with anything that didn't seem too nebulous. Hope? Peace? Joy? (The fact that joy scares the bejeebers out of me is the subject of a future, perhaps too personal, blogpost.)

But I DO have a word. It is a concept that hit home with me a couple of months ago. According to Google....

Acknowledge: 1.) accept or admit the existence or truth of. 2.) recognize the fact or importance or quality of. 

Everybody wants to know that their presence on the planet isn't an accident, or worse, a mistake. Everybody wants to know they matter.

To acknowledge someone says this:

I see you. You matter. Your ideas matter. Your experiences. Your wisdom. Your hard work. Your gifts. Your generosity. Your ingenuity. Your kindness. Your heart. Your heart matters. 

I see you. You matter. Your suffering matters. Your confusion. Your frustration. Your anger. Your disappointment. Your loneliness. Your pain. Your grief. Your broken heart. It matters. 

You are not invisible to me. You matter. You matter in this world. You matter in God's plan. 

To acknowledge someone does not mean that you have to agree with them or become their very best friend. And it certainly doesn't mean that you have to fix whatever it is that is weighing them down or tearing them apart. It just means that you see them and you are there with them and they matter.

You can acknowledge someone by finding the person outside the group and striking up a conversation. By going out of your way to say hello. By finding something you have in common. Asking questions and their opinion. By listening, yes, listening, to their ideas without the need to argue and set them straight.

You can acknowledge a person by responding to them. Reply to their message or text or phone call or email. Nothing tells a person that they don't matter like complete silence on the other end. Sometimes the silence conveys disapproval. At to other times dismissal. It always conveys the idea that you just don't care. In fact, my husband wants to start a new hashtag #nocrickets, to encourage people to respond, even if it is just to say, "I got your message. Let me think about it." Acknowledge the message and you acknowledge the person.

Pastors, you can do a great deal of good by just acknowledging specific types of suffering in the sermons. It tells your people that you see them. You know their pain. And you are with them in their suffering. Ignoring pain doesn't make it go away. Speaking of it gives it meaning and connection. No fixes needed. Just acknowledgement and understanding.

I am not trying to lecture anybody else as much as to remind myself just how important this is. I know I have failed at this so many times. I acknowledge even that. We can do that. We can acknowledge where we have failed and hurt people.

So, here is to 2019. The year to acknowledge.

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Comparing Pain

I got my bubble burst last week. I have always been enamored with natural disasters. Maybe because I love severe weather. Maybe because I love the excitement. Maybe because I a bit of an adrenaline junky. Maybe because I love to see a shakeup in the status quo. But mostly because of the way people are when a collective disaster strikes.Walls come down. Differences fade. Community develops. The little things just don't matter so much. I long for that. I thought that was the way it always was.

Last week I was reading Richard Lloyd Parry's chronicle of the earthquake and the tsunami that hit rural northern Japan in 2011, Ghosts of the Tsunami. He particularly focuses on one village and one school. There were just over 100 students in this K-5 school. After the earthquake, several parents came and took their children home. leaving 78 children at the school when the unexpected happened and the tsunami hit. Of those 78 children, only four survived.

The immediate aftermath of the tsunami brought about what we have all come to expect: kindness, compassion, camaraderie, a pulling together to survive. But after the initial shock wore off and life began to take shape again and families had to move forward, a rift developed. It developed between the families that had lost children and those that had not. Between the families that had lost all their children and those that had at least one left. Then a rift between the families that were able to find and bury the bodies of their children and those who could not. It is absolutely heartbreaking that in a scenario of such horrific loss each person was so completely absorbed in their own brand of loss, in their own story, that they could not see that their stories were more alike than different. Pain, suffering, loss, grief....they do that, I guess.

We all do it. We compare. We compare our pain to somebody else's. Other people compare our pain to somebody else's. And chide us. "At least he isn't hitting you. Look at Sandra's husband. Now I feel sorry for her." "At least it wasn't rape. It can't have been that bad." "Quit whining, you have a roof over your head. Look at those poor people in India." We expect that quantity and quality are the same thing.

Quantity of suffering does matter. The ACE (Adverse Childhood Experiences) study shows that with each ACE comes a large percentage increase in physical and mental health issues well into adulthood. And yet even with the ACE, there are mitigating factors. So quality of suffering matters, too. A child with more resilience will have fewer negative effects with a higher score than a child with less resilience. So a child with no social or emotional support will suffer just as much or more over an adverse experience as a child with better support but more experiences.

I saw a meme this morning that said that you can drown in 8 feet of water just as easily at 20 feet of water. The quantity of water doesn't matter.

We can't compare suffering. We just can't. Abuse is abuse. Betrayal is betrayal. Loss is loss. Pain is pain. How can we come alongside each other, alike in our suffering though perhaps different in our circumstances? What are your ideas?

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