Just listen!

I'm taking the training necessary to become a Hospice volunteer. My parents volunteer for this hospice: http://kamloopshospice.com/ and I volunteer for this one: http://www.steinhospice.org One of the units we covered this week was listening skills. I'll be the first to admit that I'm NOT the best listener. I once heard someone say that "some people don't listen they just wait for their turn to talk." I could relate to that because I was/am one of those people. It's not that I don't care what you're saying it's just that I'm so full of my next big idea to tell you. Until this summer. Then I learned the importance of listening. How do you learn the importance of listening? By having a need to be listened to.

I was in the middle of a major life crisis that had spun off into another major life or death crisis. I reached out to somebody, told them what was going on and they in turn gave me all sorts of solutions to the crisis. My reaction? To throw the phone across the car! Why? Because at that moment in time, as big as the crisis was I didn't want advice, the right thing to do was obvious, what I wanted was to be listened to.

Fast forward 6 hours, arriving home alone to a house with sleeping children and the red light on the answering machine blinking. I hit "play" and instantly the voice of a very old, very distant friend filled the room. He had read between the lines of a vague facebook status and had sensed something was up. Not only up but desperately, desperately wrong. His response was to bestow upon me one of the best gifts I've ever received; the gift of listening. His message told me to call him back immediately and that he and his wife wanted to listen to me until I felt better. How can you turn down an offer like that? One press of "re-dial" and I began a verbal purge. The current crisis came out, a bunch of other stuff came out. Fears, worries, stressors. Old secrets and ancient traumas all spilled forth. My friends listened compassionately and in a way that encouraged me to keep talking. They listened and I felt safe. Safe to throw my relationships, my culture and my religion all under the bus. 2 hours later I was drained and they were still attentive. When it was done I felt a certain sense of freedom; freedom from all those things that had been weighing me down and that I had been carrying. I had been listened to thoroughly and lovingly.

There's an anonymous poem that says it so well.
　
"LISTEN
When I ask you to listen to me and you start giving me advice, you have not done what I asked.

When I ask you to listen to me and you begin to tell me why I shouldn't feel that way, you are trampling on my feelings.

When I ask you to listen to me and you feel you have to do something to solve my problem, you have failed me, strange as that may seem.

Listen! All I ask is that you listen. Don't talk or do - just hear me.

Advice is cheap; 20 cents will get you both Dear Abby and Billy Graham in the same newspaper.

And I can do for myself; I am not helpless. Maybe discouraged and faltering, but not helpless.

When you do something for me that I can and need to do for myself, you contribute to my fear and inadequacy.

But when you accept as a simple fact that I feel what I feel, no matter how irrational, then I can stop trying to convince you and get about this business of understanding what's behind this irrational feeling. And when that's clear, the answers are obvious and I don't need advice. Irrational feelings make sense when we understand what's behind them."


Except for the days when I don't want to be listened to. Those are the days I want somebody to DO something. I was recently told that I have a rescuers personality and the context that it was put into was not good. I'll agree, I do rescue and I'm proud of it. In my own defense I come by it honestly; all 3 of my parents were and are the type to not sit idly by and watch somebody suffer. We are jump in and get involved people. Not only was I an industrial first aider but I spent a long time being involved with the competitive part and people of it. First aiders at all levels participate in competitions to prepare ourselves for emergencies. Mine rescuers compete, so do ski patrolers and life guards. People's lives get saved. I've always known that everybody can do something to help no matter how small. The only sin is in not getting involved. It goes back to the old thing about "there's no small parts only small players." I remember attending to an accident in a local park one night as a very junior first aider. All the big, cool life saving stuff was being handled by those people who could build all the first aid equipment they would ever need out of a roll of duck tape. I was assigned the very unglamourous job of paper work. In the dark, on the ground. And although I might have seen the grunt work as unimportant I knew that the pressure was on me to get it right. Somebody in the crowd saw me struggling and turned their bike light on me to help me out. Everybody does something.

I've also learned a heck of a lot from a certain grandmother figure whose rally cry has always been "I don't want to be ornamental I want to be practical!" From her I learned not just to offer to help a person in crisis but to see a need and fill it. To show up at the house of someone who has lost a loved one with a casserole (in a foil pan so it doesn't have to be returned thank you) in one hand and the stuff to scrub the bathroom with in the other.

I've got to admit that in my current turmoil I'd appreciate if somebody would do something to help. Either offer to be the intermediary between ourselves and the other party or come over with that casserole. If one more person tells me to pray about it or to wait on God about it I will scream! Yes I want God, I want him with skin on!

I know that I've got some growing to do (don't we all?) One of the tenants of hospice is to let people die naturally and with dignity. Let nature take its course without a lot of interventions including CPR the skill I once prided myself in knowing everything about. As per patients wishes I may not be to "do" anything. And that may be for the better. Same with parenting. There are days when you stay up late re-tying an essay for a child and days when you watch them leave their lunch on the counter as they walk out the door. Learning to un-rescue may be as much of a learned skill as learning TO rescue.

I guess what I'm saying is that there is a place for both listening and doing. To everything there is a season right? There are days or situations when I need to be listened to and not have the problem fixed and there are days and situations when I want practical help? Can't tell which day it is? Just ask, I'll be glad to tell you. And what I hope is that when my turn comes I'll be able to help you with your needs; lest the phone be thrown down.