what happens when an adversary becomes a teacher

I am thinking about an old boss of mine.  I was young, the office was small (three people), and she was an exacting perfectionist.  The work was intense - 'special events' - and sometimes I worked as many as 80 hours in a week.  Because the office was so small, sometimes the work felt personal...almost like a family.  My boss scared me.  She was so perfect.  And controlled.  And never seemed to flinch at the number of hours we worked.  She never broke character.  At least this is how I interpreted her with my 24 year old brain.  I tried really hard to live up to her expectations of me (which I felt were to be just like her).  I knew I failed when I ended up crying in the supply closet.  When she discovered me there crying, she yelled at me and sent me home.  I found another job in the next few months.

I'm thinking about this because of a note I found written in a journal of mine - in the past few months, a friend of mine said, "the people who bring us the greatest challenge and pain are our greatest teachers." 

I know my old boss didn't bring me the "greatest challenge and pain" in my life, but she brought me some.  I never knew whether I wanted to hate her, for her to like me, whether she was my friend or adversary.  How confusing!  What did I learn from her?  What did she teach me?  It's an interesting way to look at someone who is bringing you now (or brought you in the past), hurt, discomfort, anger, unrest or grief.  I think it can be a way to learn from everyone in our lives from bosses, to crushes, to our own parents or children...what is it that I am learning about myself , about what I need or want from this person?  I am being taught by a teacher, that I never expected.

I think about my old boss now.  What did I learn?  At that time I was taught lessons that fit with my 24 year old self:   I learned that the job felt bad, because it was bad for me - not because there was something wrong with me that I needed to fix to make myself fit the job.  I learned that it wasn't good for me to be around a person that made me feel like I needed to lie.  Now, I think as an older woman - how I want to mentor and nurture and teach younger people. Also, as my older self, I  see that I have a little of her in me, and that is a part of me that isn't as healthy as it could be.  I can be exacting and hard on myself (ouch!  it's not easy to find  honest answers to our questions). 

Maybe someone is challenging you right now.   Our most important relationships tend to be complicated.  It might be interesting to take a few minute and ask yourself,  "what is this person teaching me?"  Take enough time to write your answers down.  It may be that you not only are enlightened by what you find, but that your relationship with that person lightens up too.

this I believe: love

The weekly ritual after our team meeting when I worked in home hospice: We dimmed the conference room lights and lit a candle.  A colleague (usually a chaplain), read the names of those who died that week in our care.  If any of us had worked with that patient, we were encouraged to say a few words about the person, their family, or our experience as a caregiver.  I'll never forget the story a young nurse told.   She was a beautiful, intelligent woman. Tall and red-headed and possessing that air of competency and compassion that we all want in a nurse or doctor.  She had a quick, warm smile.   I'll call her Kate.  Kate worked in the poorest neighborhoods in St. Louis - the areas where we occasionally needed security escorts, where there were stop signs on corners covered in posters and decorated with teddy bears because it's where a kid had been shot and killed.

On this day during our memorial time, Kate told about a poor man, dying virtually alone.  He was in his early twenties - younger than we were!  He had a place to be, a 'home', but the people around him were not coping well with his care.  I don't remember if they were family or friends, but in his weakened and confused state he kept throwing himself out of his bed onto the floor.  They were angry and frustrated with this.  In hospice, we call this 'terminal restlessness', and odd, restless behaviors are not necessarily uncommon.  One day, Kate walked in and he was on the floor again.  Something dawned on her - he was so terribly weak, so wretchedly frail.  "He wants to die on the floor," she realized.  And she got down on the floor and put her arms around him.  After a short time, he died on the floor, in her arms.

I will always be awed by her love.  To me, this was an act of spontaneous love and mercy.  I witnessed and was a part of many such moments during my work in hospice.  It made me into, what Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. might call, an extremist for love.   There are many uncertainties in this life, but I know that we are put here to love one another.  To grow to be unafraid of loving one another.  To grow to be unafraid of feeling the love others have for us, and knowing we are loved. 

Recently, I have been saddened to witness and be touched by violence and death, both in my community in and my professional life.  I am humbled by the healing we all need. 

Violence and death pull up many uncertainties in us.  Yet, if I had to say I believed only one thing, I would have to say this:  Love.  I believe the boy who died in Kate's arms experienced some type of healing and peace through love and her willingness to overcome internal fears, and conventional rules and norms. 

I have friends from every spiritual and non-spiritual system of belief...but, it's hard for me to write about love without writing about God.  Almost daily, I witness something more powerful and profound, more miraculous than the many hard times that can be a part of our lives.  I call this "God."  And there's not much I can know about God for sure, but I have experienced love. 

In dark moments love may come to you in unexpected forms and places .  You are also an agent of love.  This I believe.

National Alliance on Mental Illness - www.nami.org

I woke up this morning to a slow rain and faraway thunderstorm.  It feels good after all this dry and heat.  And there's also something melancholy about the rain and a dawn that is dark. 

I am aware that there is a funeral in my small community this weekend.  As has been reported in the news, a mother in our area, who'd apparently suffered from terrible depression, killed her children and herself. 

We live in a world full of the unknown and the unknowable.  Several people this week have asked me, as a grief therapist, "why?" 

There are not simple answers.  In this time that is so grievous to so many, I don't know how much room there is for hope.  I think it is insensitive to ask people to 'hope' before they are ready.  Yet, as a grief therapist, and someone who has been around death and dying for much of my professional life, as someone who has worked with survivors of a loved ones' suicide, or homicide, and even murder-suicide, what I hear again and again from survivors is that they wish there was more public knowledge, information and understanding about mental illness.

If you or someone you love has mental illness, please know that there are resources and help.  The National Alliance on Mental Illness  www.nami.org is a great place to start.

There are many kinds of mental illness.  Some kinds feel terrible to the person who is suffering. Some, oddly enough may look like suffering to us on the outside, but the person with the mental illness, doesn't feel bad or they aren't aware that they're putting themselves in danger. 

Sometimes, when we hear about or are touched by terrible and sad events in our communities and our world, we feel for an instant that it is an outrageous thing to hope.  Yet, I must dream of a time where these types of tragedies, whether it is in my community or in Aurora, Colorado are, literally NOT.  Hope can be found where there is love and understanding, where we all know that we are not alone, and that our suffering does not need to be a secret or a source of shame.