Love Came Down
My 3-year old daughter, Eden, has a battery-operated microphone that sings the chorus of the song, “Let It Go” from the Disney movie, Frozen. And after it sings the song, the voice of Elsa declares triumphantly, “What a performance!”
I hate this microphone. It is loud and tinny. It’s repetitive. I’m starting to feel like Let It Go is a theme of my life right now: (read previous blog here) and frankly, I’m a bit sick of it. At some point during a Toy Cleanse, I was able to pack up the microphone and send it over to Grandma’s. Unfortunately, Eden rediscovered it with glee in Grandma’s toy bin and promptly brought it back home to us.
The thing is: Eden isn’t even singing. I love to hear her sweet voice. I love to hear her sing songs. I don’t love to hear a Fake Elsa recording over and over, with false affirmation at the end of it all about what an amazing performance we just had. But Eden’s obsession is exactly because that: she doesn’t actually have to sing, but she feels like she did.
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Having cancer means that I’m on the receiving end of a lot of good intentions, both with follow-through and without. It has been moving to see love in action. The generosity of people, especially from the unexpected—the folks I barely know—has been remarkable:
– A friend of a friend, whom I’ve never met, sent us a (quite!) significant Amazon gift card.
– Relatives from across the country that I haven’t seen in over 20 years have sent checks and gift cards with kind notes.
– An acquaintance dropped by our house and delivered a gingerbread kit for our girls to do: watching all three of them delight over designing and constructing it together was the joy of my day.
– Grubhub gift cards surprise my email inbox. Handwritten notes surprise my mailbox. Chick fil a gift cards overflow in my wallet. (Can you have too much Chick fil a? No. The answer is a resounding no.)
– A homemade, lovingly crafted meal was delivered by a mom with her three small kids in tow: all the way across town at rush hour. She and I are not close, we have mutual friends. Her note read, “My whole family is praying for your whole family. Love His kingdom.”
– I was late in paying my monthly share in our medial co-op group. (Longer story on how a medical co-op group works later). I wrote a note with my check, which went to a perfect stranger in Ohio, apologizing for the delay and explaining that I had recently received a breast cancer diagnosis, so some things had fallen through the cracks. About a month later, I opened a note from this stranger along with $100. She wrote that when she and her husband were young with small children, many years ago, he also had cancer. It was a very hard time for them. She just wanted to pass along something that could help ease the burden. I read the note aloud to Ty and couldn’t make it through without crying. It was warm, thoughtful, kind. I was overwhelmed by unexpected, beautiful love in action.
– I’ve already mentioned how heartwarming it’s been to see our meal list filled up with people from all of our walks of life: church, work, old college relationships, neighbors. But especially tender to me are the names of people I truly barely know. We are not close friends. We don’t rub shoulders often. These are outliers of my life, but they have heard of our need and they’ve risen up to fill it the best way the know how.
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I pause here. I’ve been thinking about this blog for a few weeks and mulling over how to write this next part in a way that is gentle, full of grace, and seasoned with salt. I suppose I’m just going to say it: we’ve also been on the receiving end of good intentions with no action.
My deepest hope is that nobody who reads this starts to question whether they’ve been one of those people to us. This isn’t about the Pattison family. It’s about Love with Action versus Feeling with Good Intention. These are two remarkably different. But, just like Eden with her Elsa recording, we can be tricked into thinking we’ve put on a good performance.
I am the Chief of Sinners in this category. Let me give you an example: About a month ago, a friend found out that her father has cancer. They were still awaiting test results to confirm exactly what they’re looking at, but he’s older and it’s going to be a hard road.
About a week later, she texted me regarding his official diagnosis. One of my first thoughts was, “Shoot! Why did I let a whole week go by without reaching out to her about this?” I had dropped a ball, and I knew it. Love asks. Love inquires. Not out of obligation or a sense of duty, and not out of performance. But because Love truly cares about other people.
I texted her a few days later to ask what her parents’ favorite restaurant is. I wanted to send a gift card. Calhoun’s: she says its easy and close to their house. Perfect.
That was a week and a half ago. And I still haven’t done it. I think about it almost every day, but life is busy. Work all day. Pick up kids. Get groceries. Go to chemo. All the things. But these are just excuses. Simply: I just haven’t made the time yet.
Perhaps the text that I sent her made me feel good about myself. I’m going to do this is like a feel-good dopamine hit to the brain. And even deeper: perhaps it was a performance. Let me show you what I’m going to do so that you (my friend) see it and love me more. Perhaps. I don’t know. But I do know this: just thinking or just saying (even worse!) I’m going to do it sounds a lot like the fake Elsa voice: a whole lot of tinny, empty nothing.
If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. -1 Corinthians 13:1
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Advent is almost upon us. Last year, a friend gave me an early Christmas present. It’s an Advent daily devotional called, “Love Came Down at Christmas,” by Sinclair B. Ferguson. It’s small, but it packs a powerful punch. (If you’re looking for a good Advent preparation, I recommend it highly).
The very first reading is based on the above verse. You see, it’s what the Advent season is all about. Love in Action. God came down. Ferguson writes,
Love isn’t the same thing as having great gifts. You might be a very gifted teacher. You may be applauded as a musician. You might be admired for your spiritual prayers. But none of that matters if you do not love. … Whatever gifts you may have, love always means that you come down. It means that you use those gifts for the good of others, not to make yourself feel good. It means that you are willing to do things that are uncomfortable, or inconvenient for you, or that go unnoticed.
We are all busy. We all have lives and duties and full hours. But some people are willing to actually make time when the rest of us just think about it. I am going to confess something that at this point feels truly shameful to me: I do not sign up to bring meals. In my mind, I’ve always thought: I barely feed my own family dinner—how on earth am I going to find time to feed another family? This is not my skill set. And just like that: I’ve excused myself.
The thing is: there are a million ways to care. But once the excuse is made: am I actually doing anything? I am the Queen of Good Intentions. I’ll send them a note. I’ll send them a little care package. I’ll send them a gift card. My honest self-assessment: most of the time, I don’t. Sometimes I get halfway: I write the note and put it in an envelope. I’m a stationer, for pete’s sake! I find it a month later in my car with no stamp or no address. It never gets mailed. And then enough time passes that it becomes easier to push away that prompting nudge. And eventually, it’s forgotten.
Side note with full disclosure: It is very hard to write that. I’ve recrafted the above paragraph many times over trying to make myself sound better. But I’m going for full throttle transparency, because I want you to, as well. I’m going to lean hard here into my Enneagram 4 wing and choose authenticity over my Enneagram 3 desire to perform and appear successful. (Don’t know the Enneagram? It’s a slight obsession of mine, but another post for another time!) It’s hard to look at yourself in the mirror and see Real You accurately, but it’s even harder to turn that mirror and let someone else see it with you. I’m going to trust that you, dear friends, aren’t as disgusted with me as I am with myself. Or at least can forgive me.
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As terrible as cancer is, there is also beauty. Certainly, being on the receiving end of all this unexpected love in action is beautiful. But even more so, I hope that I’m changing; that my heart is warmed into action for other people in their pains and their trials. I want it to change me. I do not want to be a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. I do not want to be empty. I want to act in ways that are “uncomfortable, inconvenient, or go unnoticed” on the regular. In short, I want to be a better person and to make the little world around me a better place, too. Don’t we all?
I write this early in the morning. I have a full day: work, chemo, kids. But so help me God—and I mean that literally—I will be stopping by Calhoun’s today for a gift card, or else I’ll die trying. Because Love Came Down, and I want to join Him.
