Giving when it hurts !
By: Navin (September 28th, 2009)
Hi Vishal,
Today when i was watching my one year old son playing with his favorite toy i was taking in the joy of seeing my son learn and grow up. He was so happy and i felt contented to see him joyful and soaking in the love and caring that we were giving him as a family. Suddenly, a longer shadow came over him, it was his elder brother coming in after a brawl with the neighborhood boys. He was angry and frustrated. And he was looking for an easy prey.
He just stretched those hands, shook off the toy from his tiny brother and ran away with it. All of a sudden that playful and innocent smile disappeared from my child’s face. It turned red and with tears rolling down those smooth cheeks, declared with inconsolable cry that his innocence was violated,helplessness exploited and that he was robbed of what he owned and he experienced one of the first real cruelties of living here on earth. I was livid with my elder son, as a petition was raised to my fatherly heart and i was more than happy to restore back to him, what he had lost. But one thing that i realized was that my younger son just learnt to hold on to his valuable possession tighter and he did not trust anyone with it, not even his dad,he denied to give as he learnt to grab.
As i left for my hospital duty that day, i came across a young man who was admitted last night under the influence of a life threatening drug. I could listen to him wreathing in pain and shouting for one more small dose of the drug which had slowly poisoned his life. Listening to those cries, i asked the nurse to call up the parents but i was told that the parents were working in another country and the boy was here studying for engineering on a non-resident quota. He was a rich man’s son but when i saw him convulsing on the bed, crying out for help i knew, that he has been robbed. The parents had robbed him by not giving values and principles that would carry him through this period. The middle man who used to smuggle in the drugs in to the hostel and the friends who introduced him to drug abuse, all were guilty of robbing him. And he was desperately looking for someone who could counsel him and pull him out of that situation, somebody who was ready to give and not grab from him a life that was ready to blossom.
I met my supervising officer in the mess that day during the lunch time. He was out of his normal self and looked concerned. The long hours that he had been putting in over the last twenty five years seemed to be getting to him. More than the stress on the body, he seemed to be concerned about the grip that he was loosing on his adolescent sons. In all these years when he was accumulating wealth, name and fame he just forgot to give those precious few hours to his wife and kids. He told me that now he really felt out of sync with his boys who were living in a different world. His words of correction were irritating to them and he was loosing patience with them.His equation with his wife was not the very best and they didn’t know how to deal with the situation.He was thinking if he could have just fixed the problem like fixing the fractured limbs that he did with so much ease over the years. I could see that his ambition and his career had robbed him off the time that he needed to spend with his sons on his lap, the time that he needed to share with his wife. The emergencies and thousands of operations that he attended to had left his family life paralyzed. He was looking for someone to correct this situation and put life in to the right perspective, he needed somebody who was ready to give him some words of wisdom and encouragement and not another ‘time grabbing’ schedule.
On my way back i stopped over for my final stop as a visiting doctor at an old age home. I met a lady who was just admitted to the old age home that morning. I was curious to know more about her,as she looked neatly dressed and well mannered. And i was not surprised to learn that she was the wife of an industrialist. She had lost her husband some months back and she inherited all the property and business. But her sons cheated her in to writing a will which handed over all the property to them. Then they decided to put her in to an old age home where she could be cared for, as the sons and their families were too busy with their daily lives to take care of her. As she told me this story, she had tears rolling down the wrinkled face. She was not keeping well since morning and depression had taken over. She said that she did not miss her sons but she was pained that she could no more sing songs and tell stories to her grand children who loved her unconditionally. She needed somebody to sit near her and listen to her and to give her the love which she had poured out in to the life of her husband and children through the good and bad times of life. She needed somebody who could give her a hope and a purpose to live and not grab away what was left in her hands, which had worked tirelessly.
I reached home moved by the plight of individuals whom i had met during the day. And those lives just overshadowed the little problems that i cribbed about in my own life. As i read the Bible that day, i learnt how Jesus when he was breathing his last on the cross, looked at the people at the foot of the cross, the people who had plotted against him, abused him,mocked him and had him crucified.He was moved with compassion and an everlasting desire to give as he cried out to HIS father in heaven ‘ Father forgive them for they do not know what they are doing’.Even in the fleeting moments of life, he had so much of concern for his mother that he called his closest disciple and asked him to take care of his mother.
My hurting body and soul, he filled with his love and protection. But i was given the charge to ‘give’ to those whom i had seen hurt and bruised, to the people who did not know Jesus, HE asked me to become a healing balm.Let’s learn to give in this world of incessant pains and sorrows because there are many out there whose trials far outweigh our cries of momentary troubles.Jesus teaches me to give without bringing our life situation in to the equation, irrespective of what we are going through. Our tender touch, comforting words and our precious time for those who need them around us and leave our burdens to the one who carried the sins of the ‘whole world’ up on the cross, the towering image of which has changed the way we love and give…….Giving when it hurts !
Pradip.
