Chapter 15
This chapter is about care. Dr. P defines care as a kind of compassion that allows a person to enter your world and feel your pain or joy. Care says that what happens to you, happens to me. Care says that your life makes a genuine difference in my life. When we care, we pay close attention to another person's experiences. We actively listen for ways to be helpful. We take notice and attend to someone else's world as if it were our own.
Caring, Dr P says is so germane, so essential to making a difference, that if often goes unnoticed, in fact if you ask people what matters most in making a difference, care does not often even make the list. But, when you put this quality on a list of traits and ask people to rate it's importance you will always see it near the top. Why? Dr P says that without care, difference making is not possible. The three words, “I don't care” are like a deadly bullet in the heart of any attempt to make a difference.
I will go one step further and say that any action that shows that you “don't care” weather you do or not, is exactly the same as saying “I don't care” and the bullet is still shot from the gun.
Right now in my life, I do not know a single person who shows the concept of care except for their own family or close friends. This includes me. No excuses, I have stopped caring about the people around me like I should. Weather that action feels justified or not, it is not the action that God expects from his people.
I went off last blog about how hurt and angry I was about how I was treated and the lack of “care” I received from my church family and friends, but this time I am going to talk about me and where I fail. She talks about how we need people in our lives to believe in us when we are stuggling to believe in ourselves. People who will encourage us and remind us of a better vision of who we are than the one we currently see. I don't have that and only had it in minute amounts from past friends like Wendy and I think that is a LOT of where I fail now. How much better would I be if I had someone in my life to remind me that I have worth and that God sees me as important. So, the message to me, is who am I providing encouragement to? Who do I provide a vision of themselves as successful to? Right now,I am failing BADLY at that. I have let anger and bitterness guide so much of my words and actions that I have not provided hope to anyone but harsh truth. Truth is good, but there are different ways of providing truth to others and it does not have to be hard and harsh, it can be done with kindness and love. In FACT, if Truth is not delivered with real love, then it will be more harmful than helpful. God NEVER sends His truth without His complete and total love.
Dr P talks about a friend that randomly buys the meals of the customer behind them at the drive through as a way of expressing care and another friend who know her friend was going from grief to anger and was not going to let her friend face that alone and without a way to express it which she desperately needed it. It is easy for us to offer “care” to those we naturally love... our families, and close friends, but how many of us offer “care” to complete strangers or casual friends. How many of us actually “love” the people around us.
Dr P ends the chapter with a reflection on anything being more important than a caring friend who cares enough about you to find out what you need and lavishes you with love? Someone who hurts when you hurt and is willing to enter into your world in order to say and do just the right thing? Which actually reminds me of today's sermon. Jack talked about our being willing to repent when we need to repent and how it is just as important to accept forgiveness when we need to accept that we are forgiven. When we need help, we must be willing to accept that help, weather it is a word of encouragement, a couple of dollars, or a ride somewhere.
Chapter 16
Dr P talks about how she shut out her father for over a decade and was afraid that it might be too late to rebuild the bridges between them after all that time and how it wasn't too late and the healing begin after over 10 years of bitterness and pain. Her point, it is never too late to began the process of care and rebuilding broken relationships.
She makes a point of saying that there is a process of grief and anger that usually has to be worked though before beginning to reconcile relationships, otherwise I question how you can truly work to reconcile relationships with love if you are still consumed with hate or resentment or anger.
She ends the chapter with a note that most of us if not all of us have a relationship loose end that needs to be mended or perhaps we closed a door too soon on an opportunity to do good for someone. She asks what tugs at your heart when we read this chapter and do we put off a difference making opportunity because we fear that we have missed out chance or that too much time has passed and she says that time is no barrier to making a difference and to reconciling a lost relationship.
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