You don’t have to “get it”
I often hear from other adoptive families that the people in their life don’t “get it” – “it” being the unique struggles and emotions of adoption. I know how it feels to be misunderstood or unsupported, but I wonder if our language is what’s keeping some people in our lives from being as supportive as we wish.
A dear friend of mine lost her mom recently after several years of battling breast cancer. Her life right now holds a pain that I do not “get”. My mom and mother(s)-in-law are happy and healthy, I have never experienced anyone close to me dying of cancer, I have not been in the endless doctor’s appointments, treatments and somber meetings in hospitals that Donna has endured. Does this stop me from supporting her, loving her, crying with her?
No, Adam can tell you that more than once I have been found crying in the kitchen, aching for my friend and her family, wishing I could do something more than just get teary or send flowers. I do not “get” her precise situation, but I love her dearly and so I call, I write, I text. I reach out because it’s all I can do. I know that one of these days we’ll go to a chick flick together and laugh until our sides ache, lay out by a pool somewhere or buy each other glasses of wine in a cozy restaurant booth, because that’s what girlfriends do. Someday, the intense pain of this season will pass and we’ll go back to talking about shoes and jobs and hobbies. This is a gnarly time in her life that I do not “get”, but I know how to be a friend. I know how to send flowers and cards, I know how to pick up the phone, I know how to invite out to a movie, buy a latte or crack a joke when we’ve run out of tears and we need to lighten up already.
You know how to do these things too. You know how to support your friend who’s miscarried, your friend who lost someone, your friend whose heart breaks because their adoption process is slow, tedious and painful. The hard stuff is intimidating for everybody, including your friend who’s in the middle of it, so don’t let that stop you.
I guess this is what I’m trying to say: you don’t have to “get it”. You can’t possibly “get it”, and we shouldn’t expect that of each other. Friends who are in difficult seasons – no matter what it is – let’s stop demanding that the people in our lives “get it” and let’s be grateful for the care they send our way, even if it’s imperfect.
One of my favorite lines from A Christmas Carol says: “I have always thought of Christmas time, when it comes round, as a good time: a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time: the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys.”
Even though Christmas is over and we are racing headlong into 2015, we are still fellow passengers. We can sit silently by our dingy window on the overcrowded train of life, moping about how no one “gets it”, or we can begin a chat with our seat-mate, share our iPod with the guy behind us, clap along when someone bursts into song or cry along when someone gets off the train too soon.
You don’t have to “get it”. All I ask is that you hold my hand when the road gets rocky, and I promise to hold yours too, whether I “get it” or not.
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