Good Like a Medicine

If you would like to see all posts in this series, click through to the “loving other people” archive.

I’m not that old, but by God’s grace I have learned one big lesson in the last few years that I will never want to forget. The road to “The Lesson” was not easy because my pride got in the way too many times to count, and sometimes I wonder if I will be learning this lesson for the rest of my life. God is good to me, though, and I thank Him for The Lesson. In a few words, here it is:

You never know what is going on behind the doors of someone’s heart.

Doesn’t seem too profound, I know. If there is any huge thing I have learned recently, however, this would be it. God has been showing this to me over and over for the last three or four years, and I tend to see Him reminding it to me again every day as He holds up the glasses of parenthood in my home.

Meeting a Man

There was a man I met several years ago, and God used his life to teach me The Lesson for the first time — at least the first time I can remember. Of course there was my mother when I was younger. The pieces of her life and sacrifice for me in conjunction with her love for her “hard to love” mother started to fit together as I grew in maturity, but getting to know this man was like God screaming The Lesson at me loudly and clearly lest I miss it. For many months I got acquainted with him and his family, and at some point I remember telling my husband some critical opinions I had of him. He confused me, and I questioned his walk with God. Initially he seemed interested in the spiritual welfare of our family, but down the road he seemed aloof and cold to us. His wife seemed to draw away from us, too, and I didn’t know what to think for a long time. I wasn’t really hurt, but I guess a little angry and bitter. The bitterness that takes root — that’s part of The Lesson, too. So I mentally retreated from fellowship, and I was happy to settle accounts in my mind that this family was not meeting my expectations. I am sad to admit that I really did “cross them off” my “I love you” list.

Then, one day, we learned that he was silently suffering the tremendous turmoil of depression — the kind of depression that was physically debilitating and starving him of normal life. It was a complete shock to us. He was forced to stay inside his home for hours and hours on some days, and the medications were not helping. We were told that he was enduring a terrible battle of guilt, confusion, pain; his family needed our love and prayers. Everything changed inside me, and God spoke to me:

You never know what is going on behind the doors of someone’s heart.

Learning in Parables

True, the critic’s point that it is hard to love someone who never allows you to know they are hurting, but God doesn’t give us that option. Jesus covers all the bases when He commands to love even our enemies. How much more should we love sympathetically those who are quietly struggling, feeling lost or confused, or walking the lonely road of fear or isolation?

This carries over into how I treat my kids, and I’m learning it more and more all the time. Sometimes God will “WAMM!” me with The Lesson. I can’t think of an example right now, except maybe a stretch to recall the toothpaste tears from the past, but it happens so much that I’m beginning to think The Lesson is one of the greatest lessons one can learn on earth. It is about Christ-like identification with others (but that’s a whole new post to be written later for sure). A child’s tenderness and inability to communicate hurts or struggles at times are huge opportunities to love with this powerful love.

Loving Like Mother Theresa

Mostly everyone knows the legacy of Mother Theresa and her unwavering determination to love others. I park these words of hers in my mind, reminding me of The Lesson that opens the floodgates to loving others:

Being unwanted, unloved, uncared for, forgotten by everybody, I think that is a much greater hunger, a much greater poverty than the person who has nothing to eat.

This kind of person needs to hear the words “I love you, I care about you.” This person may feel inferior and left alone in a dark silence. It is up to someone else to walk over, pick up the phone, ask the awkward questions. “I will take you to church, and you will sit with me.” “I want to be with you.” “I am listening, and I care.” I beg God to remind me that this is not the time for criticism but for action.

We never know what is behind that curtain, but we do know the certainties of the Creator. He has made every person in His image, and even enemies are to be loved. When I start to forget, I assume things. I expect things. I judge people, and I can even begin to harbor needless bitterness. The loss is all mine, for if theirs is a great poverty, my love can be a great treasure, which is freely wasted if I forget The Lesson. O, may I practice the presence of God and lay no roadblocks to prevent His love to radiate through me, and Father, help me to never forget that I cannot always see into someone’s sufferings.