Listen to Shirley

            I walked one Saturday into a small spa in a town that I’d never been to before. A long-waited girls’ weekend had brought a group of friends to the picturesque town with its red brick storefronts and historic hotels.  Live oaks framed century-old mansions and a tiny café boasted a semi-retired two-star Michelin chef.  The spa, a wooden house repurposed, could have been a schoolhouse or church in a different era, and Shirley, the older woman who greeted me before leading me back, would have been right at home in either.

            Small talk led to deep talk, and I listened to a woman, decades my elder, share some events that may have broken me, had God put me in her shoes. Destruction of family land, loss of a child, and an unhappy marriage crumbling after forty years together. Triggers at the sound of thunder or any heavy storm; two-hour drives to work each way while trying to rebuild a home, and a husband who chose shouting and cursing to actual communication.

            Thirty minutes is a long time in any confessional, and my heart ached for her. She knew the literature on trauma, had listened to several books that therapist friends had recommended over the years on the long drives to and from work, but nothing changed. She still froze. She still wept.  She still struggled to articulate the hurt.

            I wondered why God had put me there, to offer wisdom to a woman who had seen sides of life that I never wanted to see.  I wondered what I could offer to a woman whose life experiences remained so much vaster than mine. I thought of clinical terms and their practical application to what she described: window of tolerance, hyper and hypo arousal, and trauma responses. Echoing terms would do nothing for this woman though, who didn’t need to be impressed by my knowledge of a field not my own or words that meant nothing to her independently.

            She needed concrete tools to process, and all I could offer were those that had helped me:

            Therapy, to help with the articulation of what overwhelmed and to learn, finally, how to prioritize herself.

            Journaling, because something about putting pen to paper cleansed the soul—and smarter people than me could show how it helped heal the brain too.

            Listening to one’s body and respecting its boundaries. Taking those days to truly rest—to breathe and recuperate.  Stretching. Yoga. Tricks to ground the mind: rough fabric beneath my fingertips, deep breaths and intentional processing of the smells nearby, sitting outside, sans all electronic distractions, identifying all external sounds.

            I don’t know if she took a stranger’s advice that day. I know though in that darkened room where the floorboards creaked and a whiff of eucalyptus lingered, that I listened to Shirley. And somewhere, while recounting moments of heartache and loss followed by strength and determination, I realized that I wasn’t there for what I could teach Shirley. I was there for what Shirley could teach me:

            Being fully present in a moment, listening, not to reply, but to understand. Honoring not just with words, but with actions those loved ones. Being okay with not having all the answers—or, at times—any answers.  Accepting that some words—e.g., “I am so sorry”—will forever be woefully inadequate in the face of overwhelming loss.

Recognizing that the speaker doesn’t always need an answer. Sometimes, he or she just needs a listener. Someone present, someone who hears both what is said and what is unsaid. Someone to sit with that person in his or her humanity.

God didn’t ask me to advise a sixty-something-year old woman that day.  God didn’t ask me to solve some of her problems or to give a surefire method for healing.

God simply asked me sit with her in the hurt.