This is a post that I first wrote a number of years ago when my son was much younger but I think it is a helpful reflection as i think through how we care for people in the coming days.

Back to 2015…….

I’m a dad and I love being a dad. I love hanging with my son and watching him grow and make sense of the world around him. There is no better sound than when he laughs or when he gets excited by something. There is no worse sound than when he is in pain or distress, no worse sight than when I see his lip turn out and when I see the tears begin to roll down his cheeks.

On a recent morning I was faced with a dad dilemma. I could hear my son crying. He was reluctantly having breakfast with his mum in the kitchen (the food being the reluctance, not spending time with his mum). Things weren’t going well. He was refusing to eat the cereal that he had requested (how unreasonable) and my wife’s assertion that he would be eating the cereal regardless of his opinion had resulted in a slightly frustrated outburst.

This is the time as a parent where you stand your ground. And my wife did. As the tears streamed down his face she sat calmly and asked him to make a better choice in this moment. She clearly pointed out that this outburst wouldn’t change her decision and that she needed him to calm down, begin eating his cereal and then he could then go off and do whatever else he had in his packed schedule for that morning.

However from the other room all I could hear was that sound that I hate more than any other; his tears.

All I wanted to do was stop his tears. It’s my job to stop his tears.

I knew that if my wife was allowing these tears to happen there was a good reason. She could have stopped his tears very quickly by lifting him up swinging him around and getting him something else for breakfast but there was something bigger going on here. He was learning something in that moment and those tears were part of the process.

Stopping the tears isn’t always the goal.

This got me thinking about how we often deal with pain. I realise that not every pain is initiated by an act of disobedience as in cereal-gate but I wonder if we can learn something from the process that would help us with the pain.

No one likes to see people in pain; no one takes joy in watching someone break down in front of us. It’s a natural human reaction to do whatever we can in that moment to stop the tears and restore some emotional calm. But those tears are simply an outward expression of a disconnect that has or is happening within us. We can dry them but the disconnect still exists. Unfortunately seeing that disconnect being repaired is a difficult job, in fact we can’t heal the disconnect within anyone, the only person who can is the Father. He will bring comfort to those in pain, He will bring healing where there are wounds that require attention.

Our job is not to heal anyone but continually introduce them to the Father. Pain at any level is a very isolating emotion. Being a good ‘pastor’ is being someone who helps to shut the door of that isolation by helping them open the door to the Father. Eugene Peterson puts it like this

You are at your pastoral best when you are not noticed

Too often though we do step in and try to become the hero in the situation. By doing this we may stop the immediate pain and discomfort the person is in and we feel that by stopping the tears we have brought healing to the pain. Then in time (days/weeks/months) the tears resurface and we answer the call to action once again only to realise that not much is healed at all and in fact we have enabled the person to remain disconnected from the only one who has a solution to their pain.