Do you realize that when you go through a difficult passage everybody in your circle of relationship has to go through it with you?  Romans 14:7 says, “no one lives to himself.”  We are locked into emotional systems of family, friends, and church; so that whatever happens to us physically happens, in some measure, to all of them emotionally. This is why it is not uncommon for people to change friends, churches even spouses after they go through a crisis. I am so glad I understood this when I was diagnosed with a pretty fast moving malignancy in my prostate a couple of years ago.  Now that I have the prostatectomy and weeks of radiation behind me, I am able to reflect on the question, “how did WE do?”

If you doubt that you live in an emotional system, just look around and analyze the difficult passages that people go through and you will see that tragedy and trial doesn’t always bring people together; it often pulls them apart.  Within thirty minutes of my diagnosis I absorbed the inescapable fact that everyone I loved was going to feel my pain. Whether I wanted them to or not, they had no choice but to respond and even no response was a response.  Sure, there’s probably someone who couldn’t care less, but never chart your course on exceptions.  Plan your strategy based on what is mostly true.  I’m not trying to sound heroic here, but I decided to be compassionate for the discomfort others were going to feel and give everyone all kinds of latitude for their reaction.

Cancer has taught me to be as comfortable with people’s silence as I am with their attention.  Now, most things in life I have to struggle with and figure out, but this one I didn’t.  As I gripped the steering wheel of my ’07 Nissan Altima that beautiful fall day in front of the doctor’s office, I made a decision that all those people I was doing life with, loved me and regardless of how they responded I would see it as coming from love.   

Let me tell you why that was a good decision.  When people went out of their way to show their care and concern I was blown away with gratitude.  When people were silent or in a few cases said “the wrong thing,” I didn’t feel annoyed.  When we allow a victim mentality we tend to be hypersensitive and over analyze everything people say, don’t say, do, or don’t do.  For me when people would say, “prostate cancer, that’s the best kind to have.”  I knew they were trying to encourage me.  When people took my news as a cue to tell me about their medical treatments, I knew they were trying to relate to me.  When people grew silent and even distant, I assumed they were so bothered about my problem it pained them to speak about it.  While I don’t recommend you intentionally choose silence or absence when someone is suffering, those reactions can be expressions of the deepest sympathy.

Let me tell you a companion realization to simply lowering expectations as a path to serenity; everybody’s in a battle!  I’ve never met another person that if I probed long enough I didn’t learn that they have had a heartache, a pain, a struggle or a worry that they are carrying around. So think twice before you go on a rant about people not caring; you might learn that you are the one who’s not caring.  Carlie Gonzales and the whole Gonzalez family have been such a source of encouragement for me because I knew what they were going through with her Ewing Sarcoma as a teenager was so much more intense than my situation.

Perhaps the greatest benefit of high positivism and lowered expectations with your loved ones is when they do show up and speak up you will feel so much more blessed than if you’re thinking, “well, about time.”  I knew my wife, Cheri, would be concerned and supportive, that was never in doubt, but she works so hard and carries such a load of responsibilities I didn’t think she could possibly stay by my side as many hours as she did.  I wouldn’t have been upset for a second if she had done less.  She insisted on going with me to key meetings with doctors and she sat by my bedside for hours every day during my week long hospital stay.  She managed dozens of conversations with doctors that I didn’t feel like having.  On their own merits, her actions were kind but because I didn’t see her response as a test of her love it was even sweeter for me.  I think you understand what I’m getting at.

I’m not saying there aren’t genuine cases of neglect and abuse by key relationships, there are.  But if you aren’t feeling loved and cared for, always be open to the possibility that your anxiety over every word, every gesture, every absence, and every silence might be the reason for your feeling of isolation.  Try giving others a break from the prison that expectations create and try believing in them for a change.  Proverbs 13:12 says, “Hope deferred makes the heart sick.”  It’s good to have hope, but when it’s attached to an inner script of what other people’s help is going to look like it can be an emotional trap.  On the other hand, a more generous interpretation of others love will, for many of us, show we are even more loved than we ever imagined and that feels good.

PS. This doesn’t amplify my point today but for the record my friends at BCC, as a group have shown a perfect balance of giving me enough emotional space to breathe but without being so disconnected I couldn’t feel their support. I have never felt I either had to talk about my experience or couldn’t talk about it if I needed to and that’s really cool. There couldn’t possibly be a church that’s better to walk through a crisis with than Bethany Community Church, that’s for sure.