“The friend who holds your hand and says
the wrong thing is made of dearer stuff than
the one who stays away.”
--Barbara Kingsolver
“They sat there on the ground beside him
for seven days and seven nights. To Job
they spoke never a word, for they saw
how much he was suffering.” –Job 2:13
I’ve been thinking about the importance of presence lately, of just showing up. Just being there. The willingness to step up to the plate, whether you are a 300 hitter or a .177 hitter, whether you have already struck out the last three times up, or you hit a homerun and 2 doubles; the willingness to go back out there and step into the batter’s box and face whatever the pitcher has in store for you. There is a kind of courage and hope in just showing up. In that willingness to risk going from hero to heal in just the swing of a bat. Think about it: bases loaded one out, Jose Altuve comes to bat and –sometimes even the greats strike out, or worse--hit into a double play. But, one of the things that makes them great is their willingness to take the risk, their willingness to just show up.
The friend that Barbara Kingsolver describes in the above quotation is like the utility player who shows up every day ready to play. He knows most nights he won’t even get off the bench, but every once in a while there is that moment when he’s called. And no matter where the coach sends him, he says yes. Will he make a few errors? Of course. Will he strike out or foul out or bunt into a double play? Yes. It’s gonna happen. But, he is willing to be that person who says yes, and puts himself out there. If baseball is any reflection of reality, then possibly even ¾ of the time he will “say the wrong thing,” or get an out (in baseball speak). But, every night he will be there. Ready to go. Willing to take the risk, ready to hold somebody’s hand…so to speak.
As I read Barbara Kingsolver’s words, I think the point she is making is that it is really about presence. Being present. Showing up. The power of someone sitting beside us, silently holding our hand, is immeasurable. It witnesses to us that we are not alone. In our hour of need, we are not abandoned. And that witness reminds us of something else: that we matter. We matter enough that someone made an effort to come and see us, to come and sit with us; enough that they are willing to give us this portion of their life, this 15 minutes, this half hour or more. They give it to us because they want us to know—we matter.
So—just showing up, very important. Heroic even. But there is something else I want to say about the friend who shows up. As we cared for my mother-in-law, there were days and days when all we had on our minds was medicine schedules and meal plans: what will fix for lunch or dinner. When is it time for the next dose of morphine or the next dose of anti-nausea meds. What snack should we fix and have ready before hand. Even simply sitting with her as she napped, everything felt fraught with anxiety and worry. It was exhausting. And when a friend would call or stop by to check on us, there would be the immediate temptation to say: We are fine. Thanks for calling. Talk to you later. A temptation to wave away the distraction so we could return to what? Our stress and our anxious waiting? That was a habit that it was easy to fall into. But with time, and the persistence of our friends, something I learned was the healing power of distraction. A chance to sit with a friend and grieve is invaluable. But, we shouldn’t neglect the importance of a chance to talk about something other than medication schedules and hospice care, a chance to remember that there is more to life than bed sores and bedside toilets. That friend who refuses to leave us to our own devices, that friend who keeps us on the phone or sits with us –even in silence—is often the friend who draws us out of our darkness into the sunlight where we find ourselves laughing about something ridiculous or simply basking in the beauty of a breeze drifting through the leaves. For me, there were friends who showed up and let me moan and unload my struggles, but then stuck around for one more pot of coffee and some silliness that left me smiling and unexpectedly renewed.
Laughter, conversation, and company renew us for the work at hand, but it also reminds us there is still a world outside of our suffering, a world beyond the shadows of our sorrow.
That being said, let me turn for a moment to the famous friends of Job. These guys are famous not for their wisdom or consolation, but for the wrongness of their advice. In fact, they are the poster boys for bad bedside manner, most famous for blaming the victim. And yet… they showed up. They even sat down with Job for 7 days and 7 nights in silence, out of respect for his sorrow. They were models of presence. Of showing up. If Kingsolver is right, and I suspect she is, then I wonder how Job felt about these friends afterwards? Did he resent them for their poor theology? Or did he hold them as dear, because when even his wife was telling him to “Curse God and die…” these guys showed up. And they stayed. Letting Job know, he mattered. And that even in his hour of need, he wasn’t alone. I am rereading the Book of Job, and I find something has changed in my view about these friends of his. Despite the wrongness of their words, I am starting to think: at least they showed up.
