Or, as an alternate title, Stop Overthinking and Start Showing Up
I've decided that we make showing love (and kindness) too hard.
Maybe it's just me.
Here's a simplified example of how it goes in my brain when I think of doing a nice thing:
"I'm going to visit my friend! I should stop at Sonic and take her a diet coke! But what if she's trying to give up soda? I could get tea. Sweet or unsweet? What if she's cutting down on sugar and I show up with a sweet tea? What if I bring unsweet and she thinks that's just gross brown water? Ugh ugh ugh. Stopping at Sonic couldn't possibly go well. I absolutely should not do that! I might inadvertently offend her! Way too risky! What was I thinking?"
I also worry about what might happen if I do a nice thing for one person and another person finds out and then wonders why I didn't do something for them. They might think I don't like them. That would be terrible! I do like them! (I mean, whoever they are...)
Woooooo! Welcome to the crazy train!
My kind, generous friend, who does not make showing love too hard, recently donated her kidney to her friend and coworker. You read that right - she gave him a kidney. I wanted to do something for her, and since I'm a proper southern lady that something needed to be food. Then I thought these things:
- What if she doesn't like what I cook?
- Are there dietary restrictions after you give up a kidney?
- How do you make good food without much salt?
- She's a good cook. She might be judge-y of my food.
- AHHHHHH!!!!! This is a terrible idea!!!!!!!
But our current Bible study is about Bob Goff's book Everybody, Always, and it reminds me that our job is to show up. That's it. Just show up. So I researched good foods for post-surgery, did some cookin', and made a delivery.
Sidebar - I love my friend and whole bunch and needed to put my eyes on her to make sure she was okay, so the delivery let me do that, too. I didn't quite care if she was up for visitors because I needed to see her. Sorry, E! :)
Anyway - I told myself over and over that even if they thought the food was gross and threw it all in the trash it didn't matter. My job isn't to be perfect. It's to give away love like Halloween candy at 9:00 pm when we all just want to go to bed.
Fast forward to Lesson #2 from our Bible study (this past week), which is about catching people on the bounce. Goff tells an elaborate story about skydiving that I won't attempt to recreate, but the idea is that when people hit the bottom - because they messed up or life dealt them a raw deal or just because their plan didn't work out like they thought - we need to be there to catch them as they bounce back up. That's what love does.
Our tendency can be avoid people when we don't know what to say. Especially those of us who are charter members of "over-thinkers anonymous." We're worried we'll mess it up, embarrass ourselves, accidentally say the wrong thing.
But who cares! Who actually cares?
We're making our jobs too hard. Show up. Love people. Be kind.
That's it. The whole deal.
It's Happy New Year for us school people, and this is my New Year's Resolution.
Just show up. That's it.
Everybody, always.
