What I have on my heart to talk about isn't anything y'all haven't heard before, but I think sometimes we can all benefit from a little reminder. A life well lived is one in which we all help each other. Because we only see of people what they allow us, and as the saying goes, many times folks are fighting a battle we know nothing about.
I think back to the one Christmas we had with Hailey. We found out on December 23 that we were going to lose her, and in an effort to clear our minds, we left the hospital and took our two year old son to the nearby mall to look at all of the holiday decorations and to ride the carousel. To outsiders looking in, we were just a happy young couple enjoying the season with our son. I remember thinking just that as we walked through the mall. That everyone around us had no idea we had just been handed the most horrific news of our lives.
I have another friend who has a hard time walking into the restaurant where her family gathered the morning she lost her mother. She can't help but stare at the table where they sat that day.
We all notice the person who is cranky in the grocery check-out line, and maybe sometimes we catch someone looking downbeat at the gas pump, but do we ever wonder why or do we just write them off as sour people? Do we offer them some grace? Look them in the eyes and offer a smile or a sympathetic word?
I heard Melissa McCarthy being interviewed on the radio this morning about a new movie she is in where she doesn't play a loud, comical, outgoing figure but rather a woman who more-so puts on a type of armor to face each day and keep people at bay. Melissa talks about puzzling out how to play a woman who lived much more on the interior, and I was touched to hear how she really started LOOKING at the people around her and truly wondering about what they were facing inside...the stuff she would have no way of knowing about from just looking at them. The stuff we all have.
We have no idea, when we start out each day, our capacity to positively impact someone else's day. A lot of times we never even find out when we have. I think that because I have grieved Hailey so publicly through this blog, I've had a unique opportunity to hear from folks we have touched or helped in some way, and I am always so incredibly thankful to the people who choose to share that with me.
Sometimes, I hear we have touched people in big ways. And other times, it is through something so small but perhaps timed so perfectly that it feels like serendipity. In these moments, I marvel at how something I might barely remember saying or doing really changed the course of someone's day or week or even year. And I think, there really must be a great Being out there who loves us all so much, to give us the capacity to connect and lift each other up in these ways.
Just yesterday, I got to experience a special moment in this regard. A friend of our family who still lives in Kansas is helping to collect blankets out there as part of my blanket drive for Hailey this year. Yesterday, she received a donation that was left on her porch with a note saying how thankful the person was to be able to participate in our drive because they'd recently lost their own child and the blanket the baby was wrapped in has come to have great meaning for them and to serve as a source of comfort. They were happy to do something positive to pay this forward, and I teared up when I noticed they lost their child on what would have been Hailey's second birthday. It reinforced for me how much we are all tied together in this fragile thing called life.
So stepping off my soapbox, I will say I GET it. I get busy in my own life, frustrated with my kids, stuck in my own problems or just in traffic...and I need to remember to slow down. To really LOOK at people instead of writing them off because I'm so busy with my own stuff. Because it is like another old saying goes, when people are looking their worst, that is when they need our best. And we are not human without connection.
With love and a grateful heart.
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