Earlier this fall, I was filling out some paperwork for my youngest daughter Brooklyn that required her surgical history. It was a task I had been putting off because it involved some digging, but it needed to get done, and the school nurse has been patient enough.
So, reluctantly, I created an updated list.
15—that’s the number of surgeries my sweet girl has had during her 14 years on this earth, three of which saved her life. That doesn’t include the hundreds of outpatient procedures, tests, therapies, and doctor appointments she has racked up, some even before she was born. It also doesn’t include the surgeries she will most certainly have in the future.
As I sat in her reality for a minute, I couldn’t help but feel the heaviness of what she has been through. It’s too much for a little girl. It’s too much for anyone.
Yet onward she rolls, one brave day at a time. Her disability is obvious, but no one really knows what she’s been through. Not really.
It got me thinking. We all have a list, don’t we? An inventory of what life has thrown at us—all we’ve been through.
I wonder what it would be like if everyone sat down, wrote out their list, and walked around with it for others to see? What would that change?
Would it make us kinder? More compassionate?
Maybe, maybe not.
I remember one morning last year, Brooklyn and I were running late, and her school bus was early. It was the first time we had kept the bus waiting all year, but we live on a busy street and our delay was holding up traffic. We rushed as fast as we could, and I literally ran as I pushed Brooklyn to the bus and onto her wheelchair lift.
In typical Lisa style, I apologized profusely to our bus driver, and I felt so guilty for all the cars we made wait. The bus driver told me to take a deep breath and assured me it was okay, and slowly, I felt my shoulders relax.
Unfortunately, the lady waiting in her car behind the bus didn’t share his understanding and was sure to tell me before she drove off. Her words stung more than she knew, and I felt tears welling up in my eyes as she verbally confirmed every terrible thing I felt about myself:
“You need to get it together, lady!” she yelled, along with a few graphic words.
“I’m trying,” I remember thinking. “Lord knows, I’m trying.”
I have a list, too.
But the thing is, that lady has a list as well, and odds are something on that list probably prompted her lack of patience and verbal lashing. She was probably running late, too, and now she was even later.
Maybe she was heading to the doctor. Maybe not. I’ll never know.
What I do know is that this world is full of hurting people with lists of burdens, doing their best to move forward, one brave day at a time.
Our circumstances will never be the same. Most of us haven’t had 15 surgeries in 14 years, but some have had far more than that. We just don’t know.
And that’s the point. We have all been through something hard. We all have lists. The choice is whether or not we treat people like they have one, and even more so, if we can soften our hearts enough to care.
It’s easier to play the victim. It’s easier to lash out. It’s easier to be so focused on our stuff that we forget others have stuff, too.
But there is so much we don’t see; so much we don’t know. There is grief and trauma and betrayal and pain all around us—spreadsheets full of dates and experiences and losses.
When we look at it that way, it’s too much, isn’t it? It’s too much for anyone.
And that, my friends, is why we have each other.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer once wrote, “We must learn to regard people less in the light of what they do or omit to do, and more in the light of what they suffer.”
The truth is we all could use a little compassion and extra grace today. All of us.
We all have lists.
Me, you, and yes, even that cranky lady in traffic who is running late.
Even her.
***
“Finally, all of you, be like-minded, be sympathetic, love one another, be compassionate and humble.”
1 Peter 3:8