It was in a passing conversation, see. Finally all the dots were connected, and I knew. I realized what her pet sin was. It was probably one she didn’t even see as I saw, considering just how conniving and blinding these tend to be.
But what’s telling is this: For at least 24 hours, I did not feel compassion for her. I didn’t pray for her. I didn’t use it to understand her more. I didn’t use it to examine my life for my own corrosive habits.
In college, I answered a youth crisis hotline one night a week. So many who called in were so…raw. Or embarrassed. Or afraid.
There was something freeing, I think, calling someone anonymously; at finally being able to share the invisible bag of stones they carried around, its weight occasionally flopping over their foreheads and making it hard to see anything else.
Of all the vibrancy of being in another culture this week, one of my least favorite is the language barrier. It’s as if I’m constantly stopping myself from asking the questions I want to know of people–from relating.
The late neurosurgeon Paul Kalanithi, in his bestselling When Breath Becomes Air, writes of the two areas of speech in the brain:
Recently I went to a friend’s house on a dark day. (Even now, it is hard to type this. I might be crying a little.)
I’d been hanging out with her and her two-year-old son, Henry, every couple of weeks or so as they got their feet back under them after his chemo. Which happened after his brain tumor. Which happened after a life-threatening bacterial infection. Which happened after he was born prematurely. I’d arrived from Africa a little late to the scene, when they’d gotten the happy MRI’s with a healthy brain.
Until.
It was after lunch. We stood on the curb before we walked out to our respective cars. She’d divulged some hard stuff, stuff that could easily be embarrassing outside of the little table we’d shared inside. I was about to step off the sidewalk—and then I thought what it might feel like to be her.
I think I said something really astounding, like, Hey. Thanks. For just, y’know, sharing hard stuff. That is always a gift to me. (My husband taught me that part. He says it’s always a holy gift when someone shares their heart with you.) I know you could be tempted to feel kind of naked after all this. But thanks for just trusting me to keep stuff like that safe. I’m going to be praying with you.
She looked me in the eye and said, “I hope I’m that place for you when you need it.”
Right now, scooter wheels are rattling past my bedroom window. Ugandan kids are out of school—and once 3 PM hits, they know they’re free to knock at our metal gate. They pour in from the neighborhood, sometimes even slinging their legs over the shoulder-height brick walls to leap down in our yard. Though I admit to some sense of relief when holidays are over—there’s a part of me that loves our yard swarming with kids.
Scientist Jared Diamond’s quote remains perennially rooted in my mind:
I have heard many anecdotal stories, among my own friends, of children who were raised by difficult parents but who nevertheless became socially and cognitively competent adults, and who told me that what had saved their sanity was regular contact with a supportive adult other than their parents, even if that adult was just a piano teacher whom they saw once a week for a piano lesson. (The World Until Yesterday, p.190)
Think of these social skills as little golden keys to the future for your kids: They can get your kids into a lot of places! Bummer is, they can shut some doors, too, when our kids don’t master them. (Disclaimer: Writing this post does not declare my children in mastery of said skills.)
Social skills are key because manners are a form of loving others well. They lubricate the potential friction of social interactions.
(Some of them I’ve broken down because of my own experience with my son’s ADHD, such as giving him “scripts” for social situations; see #1. I won’t speak directly to special needs in this post. But some of these ideas might work to put tangible steps onto often intangible skills.)
To the untrained expatriate, swooping into American culture (like yours truly) I gotta say: Face Swap weirds me out a little. My family and I, piled on the sofa, have guffawed at, say, my daughter spontaneously sprouting my husband’s five-o’clock shadow. Or my seven-year-old swapping faces with the dog.
Still. Lately, what I’m realizing about my ideas of God?
He tends to change faces.
![Now You're Speaking My [Love] Language](https://www.janelbreitenstein.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/love-languages-text-1.jpg "Now You're Speaking My [Love] Language")
© 2024 THE AWKWARD MOM
Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑
