My whole life, I have been a doer. I love to roll up my sleeves. Tackle a big job. Make things happen. I love this about me, and I think it is safe to say that others often appreciate it too. And, there are many times in life where that is neither my job nor what is needed. I have grown my discernment skills in this area over decades, thankfully. But in these situations, I am increasingly convinced that hands-off care is an underappreciated gift.

I desperately want to be able to take away others’ suffering. It’s so lovely to stop someone before they walk into a wall, share a gift, lighten a load. And lots of life’s most challenging situations cannot be quickly and easily prevented or fixed. I cannot take your cancer diagnosis for you. I cannot make other people change. It is neither possible nor desirable to remove hardships from my loved ones’ paths.

In these spaces, love looks like trusting the impact of our care. While some bemoan the offering of thoughts and prayers, I disagree with a position that suggest that thoughts and prayers must always be followed up with concrete action in order to be valuable.

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In the deepest seasons of suffering in my life, I was carried by the thoughts and prayers of people who could do very little practically or materially to ease my pain. (Of course, help with meals, childcare, and laundry were essential and much appreciated.) But many people were too far away or in situations which did not allow them to offer practical and material help. So many people have told me over the last years about how they have prayed for, thought of, and carried us through the moments of their lives while we have gone about ours.

I am so honoured and comforted by this care. I feel the gift of it when I have run out of words to pray for myself. When I am lost and don’t know what to do. 

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As my children grow older and spread their wings at home and in the world, they are further away from our family’s practical help. The are encountering more of the world’s more difficult moments. At the same time, our move further away from family means that I cannot be present to extended family and friends that we have left behind. I am being invited to remember that I can trust them to another’s care – to God and to other people, places, and graces that I could not have imagined. 

This should not be as difficult as it is for me. The effort it requires reveals to me the depth of my own need for control and chronic self-reliance. It is humbling to see my shadows so clearly. And when I hold myself with love, I see what lies beneath is really a fear of whether I can trust my own fears, weaknesses, and pain to the care of another.

Over and over again, I am tempted to do it all myself, to pretend like I don’t need others’ care, as though my humanity is a burden for the people around me. This is such a lie, and it is so obvious to everyone around me, even when I’ve deceived myself thoroughly. 

The good news is that the anecdote to my independent isolation is simply falling apart. Admitting that I cannot do it all and never have. Laughing at myself and letting God and others in. Allowing myself to receive the affection and care that is offered without judging it. Receiving care with deep gratitude.

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Care has so many forms: text messages and memes, whispered prayers and hopes, thoughts of another, showing up without words, the smallest acts of kindness offered with intention, expressions of empathy, perspective shifts. It will take me a lifetime to build an exhaustive list. 

It matters when we hold people close to our hearts, listen with compassion, wish for relief, and cry with the weary. Our prayers and intentions and energy shift the spiritual fabric of creation. In a world where everything happens, we have to make the courageous decision to trust ourselves and each other with deep care. Would a loving God have it any other way?