FROM OUR MINISTER

“Suffering With and Walking Together”

Dear Beloveds,

We sometimes don’t understand the deep need for kindness and compassion until we are the one in need. Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel said, “When I was a young man, I admired clever people. Now that I am an old man, I admire kind people.” A difficult time during my son’s childhood emphasized for me personally the importance of kindness and compassion.

After an intense stomach bug, my son was diagnosed with Pediatric Post-viral Irritable Bowel Syndrome. This had been the cause of my young son’s traumatic tummy issues. He hadn’t seemed to ever recover from that stomach bug and now we had found out that was indeed the case. His intestines had had enough and they shut down. His intestines would need to be jump-started, so to speak, with modifications in diet and medicine. Great, just what he needed. He was already allergic to a dozen foods including wheat, rice, corn, soy, eggs, and fish. More dietary modifications would surely send him over the edge. Maybe it would send me over the edge. Of course, I don’t do “over the edge.” I am a Reverend, and ministers, as parishioners everywhere know, don’t fall apart on the inside while keeping a saintly and calm veneer on the outside. Right? 

My son began his battles and I began mine. He struggled mightily to be a normal eleven-year-old boy. He just wanted to go to school and hang out with his friends, but soon that was out of reach as life began to be controlled by his grouchy bowels. He was anxious about painful, cramping, re-adjusting intestines that just refused to get back on track, and made trips to the restrooms at school and friends’ homes a torture he didn’t want to endure. Like all parents do, I suffered with him. That’s what compassion is, after all, suffering with. He missed school. He didn’t want to leave the house. His grades suffered. He became depressed. I knew the signs. I’d been there. It was a moment I’d been expecting and dreading but didn’t think would arrive until he was in high school or college. My eleven-year-old son began counseling and taking medication for depression. I suffered with him.  His anxiety level was too high for anything else but love and our compassion. All the other resources and strategies were of little help until his anxiety lessened, and his mood improved. 

The greatest blessing of all of this was one we were too overwhelmed to see at first. While we suffered, others suffered with us, compassionately and willingly. First his doctors, both his primary care physician and his pediatric gastroenterologist, were sensitive and caring, not only educating us about what was happening, but supporting us through testing and trials of medicines and therapies when it would have all too easy to be merely clinical. His school was extremely supportive. The school’s administrators, nurse, counselors and our son’s classroom teacher met with us multiple times to assist us in any way they could. I was supported by professional colleagues who understood what a toll parenting can take on one’s professional life. Add to all of this family, friends, and church and we were lifted up through this time by a vast caring, loving support network.

We will all be in need. We will all suffer at times. Ministers and other caregivers are no exception and will not be spared our share. Compassion is an intricate web. The alleviation of suffering is only possible when we understand that we are all each other’s caregivers. 

I have taken this lesson with the years – we all walk together. I can only care for you if others care for me. There is an interdependent web of compassion, and I am but a part of it. And so are you.

In Faith,

Rev. Tony