TMI

She didn’t get it. Before worship began, the middle aged woman came close to me and said “I am praying for you.” Her reply was encouraging to me. All during my life, and especially during my cancer walk, I have been grateful for all those who prayed for me. Their prayers lifted me up, encouraged me, and gave me more faith. Now during this battle, their prayers filled me with the expectant hope that with God’s intervention, I would thrive and win over this thing.

So, I thanked her for lifting me up in prayer. Then I began to tell her how I was doing: how the treatments were going, what was next, how the treatments felt. After talking for a short while, I noticed that she seemed distracted and even a little bothered by what I had been telling her. Her eyes flickered around. It was apparent to me that she was not really hearing what I was saying. I stopped, and all she could say was, “Well, just know I am praying for you.”

Maybe she didn’t really want to know how I was doing or what was going on. Maybe she couldn’t handle the details. I always tried to be appropriately transparent, and think I did so in this brief conversation. After all, I didn’t want to be guilty of giving her TMI-too much information. My suspicion then, and now, was that while she sincerely believed in prayer, she didn’t want to get into the nitty gritty of fighting cancer. Too much reality, too much “fuss and muss.”

If you are praying for someone, good for you. If you tell someone you are praying, even better. But if you are not prepared to listen to what they have to tell you, then maybe you shouldn't. Otherwise, be prepared to listen to their heart and their struggles.

©2010 Ray Woolridge