Caring about Another’s Pain without Condescension
Have you ever resented the way someone demonstrated their caring and love for you? Even though you knew they meant well?
I have. And I’d like to learn how to not do this to people I care about.
While researching my parents’ lives for a forthcoming biographical novel, I came across this entry in one of my mother’s diaries:
“After we rest we go to a small cabin and spend a wonderful time with Mary Lou, JR and Dave (my siblings). Visit till late and we bare our souls as we lay Marlena before the Lord. She’s a lost sheep. Only God can help her.”
Good intentions? Without a doubt.
Caring? Absolutely.
But here’s the thing: Acts of caring are sometimes nothing more than a smokescreen for presumptuous and disrespectful condescension.
It saddens me today that my family believed in that moment that I was so lost that I needed their prayers and their pity. In fact, at the time my mother wrote that diary entry, my life was as good as it has ever been. My professional career was taking off, my grown children were doing well, Ed and I had found a spiritual community in Denver, and our relationship with each other was steadily growing deeper and stronger.
But Ed and I were living “in sin.”
This was the sin my family members were baring their souls and praying about: We were living together while not yet officially married. (Our legal wedding took place a month after she wrote the entry.)
Correction: They believed Ed and I were living “in sin.” In actuality, we were living in love and grace!
I love my family and I’m quite sure their intentions were good, but sadly their prayers in that moment arose from a place of condescending arrogance that I think was truly unholy. As they knelt, their bared souls seemed to proclaim, “Not only are we right and you’re wrong, but we’re better people than you are. And we know what’s best for you.”
I believe that prayer can be a sacred act that benefits both the pray-er and the one prayed for. But like any other form of caring, it can package disgusting conceit in an admirable wrapper if it comes from a place of judgment or condescension.
So how then can I ensure that my acts of caring for another aren’t a camouflage, hiding contemptuous judgments? Don Miguel Ruiz’s Four Agreements come to mind. The third of his four agreements is “Don’t Make Assumptions.”
It takes a great deal of courage and humility to start from a place of not knowing, to ask rather than to assume, and to be certain of only one thing — that I will never know the whole truth about anything or anyone.
But that’s the only way I can truly care for another without imposing my often-irrelevant, condescending and harmful judgments.
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