Almostgotit.com

I had something else planned for today’s post, but am writing this instead.

This morning I received a long letter from a friend, also copied to several others in her circle, telling about her family’s struggles with their adopted child, now entering his teenage years. The family fostered him as an infant, and how we cheered when his adoption finally went through! He’s a dear and charming young fellow, but it turns out that their family life together has not been so charming.

On and on she wrote. She has worked so hard to reach the heart of this child. She and her husband have just taken out an enormous home equity loan and have committed themselves to an effort to save their son… perhaps literally.

She didn’t know it, but I sent out a letter quite a bit like my friend’s about a year ago, so I  wrote back, immediately.  Thank you for sharing. How brave you are. You are afraid you are a bad parent, but in fact your love for your son is showing so much that it drives me to my knees.

I thought of my heart-friend Kathy. I told my friend about her. I shared with her the contents of my own letter, and how Kathy had responded to it so lovingly, and that we’ve been exchanging long emails, almost daily, ever since. But not just Kathy. I told my friend that really, our family’s relationships with every single recipient of that letter has changed and expanded because of it. I hoped she would be similarly blessed.

I thought of Kathy a few days ago, too, when I stood with another friend in my kitchen as she told me a terribly wounding thing her mother had told her. I cupped her face in both of my hands, turning her face to mine.  NO. Those words are NOT SO. Those were poisonous words, and I am so sorry you had to hear them.

Her eyes welled up.  No one has said that to me yet. You are the first one.

Oh, love. No matter how old we are. No matter how much we love the ones we love, no matter how many reasons and explanations we can give. Those breaks and illnesses and barbs that come at us from within our own families, from within the safety zone, how they do hurt and frighten us.

What can we do for hurting friends? We can do what Kathy did for me, and that is truthfully to remind them of their own strength, but most of all, to tell them that they are lovable — and loved.