Admit the Truth
I got an interesting e-mail tonight. Someone I've never met wrote, asking a very simple question. "I'm a friend of such-and-such," It began. "I was hoping that you could give me some advice on how to best help her through this time, any books to read, etc, as she struggles with M.E."
I was completely blown off my feet. This is the sweetest thing I've seen someone do for someone else in a long time.
It got me thinking about all of the doctors I wish would have said that to me--how many people I've wished would just say, "I have no idea how to help you but I'd like to try."
So many of the doctors I went to over the years have just taken one look at me and given me that dubious look that I knew ment they weren't going to take serious a word I said. There seems to be some unwritten rule in the medical world that if nothing shows up on the blood test then the patient must be lying. I used to get so angry when yet another test came back 'normal'. The doctors would shift impatiently in their big, high-backed, padded chairs; they'd clear their throat in that apologetic little way, and no matter how many evasive phrases they used I could see the truth in their eyes.
"It took me six years to become a doctor," I could hear them saying, "Four years studying, two years in field practice. I know everything there is to know about the human body. Your symptoms don't correspond with any disease in any book I've ever read. If I don't konw about it then it mustn't exist. Baby, go home. Snap out of it. It's all in your head."
By the end of the first year I didn't care so much anymore about finding a doctor who could help me as much as I just wanted to find one who had the guts to admit they had no idea what I had. I have a friend who has had severe Fibromyalgia, a form of M.E., for over thirteen years and she said she got to the same point. In the end we know the system can't help us, but oh, how nice it would be if the modern medical system would just shut it's big mouth and admit it.
Strangely enough, it hasn't been the other people with M.E. that have helped me the most but my closest very healthy friends who have said, "I have no idea how to help you, but if there's anything I can do please tell me." Words like that mean so much to someone who is chronically ill.
The one friend that has helped me the most was in fact the one who, in physical terms, never did anything. She told me straight out she could never give me advice, but that her inbox was always open to me and that whatever I wrote to her about she'd pray. She never told me what to do, she never told me how I should feel. Most often her replies were usually one line, "Know that I've read this and am praying."
In the end, though, it was her friendship that got me through the darkest times. Knowing she admitted she'd never be able to really understand what I was going through gave me the security to pour out my little heart and know I wasn't going to be ridiculed. I knew she loved me enough to listen, enough to admit she didn't understand, and enough to admit she'd give it all to God.
So often this is all that any of us ever need. We don't need someone with all the answers, and we especially don't need someone who thinks they have all the answers. Often all we need is someone who has the wisdom to hold us close and just listen in simple silence.
I find this especially hard myself. I'm a perfectionist, someone who is always trying to second guess meanings and questions. For a long time I've struggled with learning how to just let things be. When someone asks even simple questions I like to have an answer, to think I know something they need to hear.
"I don't know, please give me advice." He said.
I think about how those words make me feel and I wonder just how many hurts in this world could be avoided if you and I, and every other person, could just swallow our pride and have the guts to admit once in a while, "I don't know."
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