The Supporter

It’s an interesting place to be.

The Supporter.

It’s a place that is in between everyone’s misery, in between pain and suffering. It’s an in between place.

A place that is found in vacuuming the corners of your mother’s house because she’s too sick do it herself. A place that is found in cleaning your sister’s blinds because she is in a chemo-coma. A place that is found in cleaning out your friend’s junk drawer because she is too overwhelmed and depressed to do it herself. A place that is found in cleaning blood stains off your other mother’s head at night from a fall. A place that is found in a listening ear, myriads of friends contacting you to have a heart-to-heart about their problems because you will listen … you will understand that all they want is someone to just attend to them and validate them. A place that is found in traveling miles to help someone, finding a babysitter for your own babies so you can go love someone else’s children, coming home to your own huge piles of laundry and looking at them with a deep sigh, getting messages from those who need help and having to decide who you have the energy to give to, staying by your sick child at midnight because during the day you were organizing your parents garage.

I wouldn’t say it’s a secluded place because as a Supporter you are around other’s, and other’s need you. You aren’t isolated. But I would say that emotionally you are caught between a frog in your throat and a hole in your heart. This lonely spot of wishing, of desiring “the Different”. There is an element of the Supporter that is fatigued, yet prepared to keep giving. Parts of you that have endless energy to keep assisting, yet wanting to run away to the beach for a week.

It’s a noteworthy role, yet not one that is acknowledged. An important part that would cause a huge hole in the flow of life’s play, but not the main character, nor a role to brag about to people around you. Sometimes a post on social media about being with someone is posted, with happy faces that really don’t portray the agony that is happening on the other side of the photo. Most of the time a “thank you” is shouted from the other room as you leave. And you are satisfied with that. Gratified in knowing you were able to be there to give, even for a slight period inside of the reality of the constant pain someone is experiencing. 

Yet, the Supporter knows that the ultimate reason for giving of yourself over and over and over again is because He did that for you. It is a contented place, an eager place, not a place of grudges or malice or jealousy. It is deeply joyful, not laugh-like-crazy-because-you-won-the-lottery joy, but delight because you can honor Him in your giving, your loving, your cleaning, your exhaustion, your energy output, your dinner-to-go-to-a-friend… in essence your whole life. Because your life is His. 

So you keep on going. 

Yes, it’s an interesting place to be.