“Let me know what I can do.”
We make the offer to newly home adoptive families and families facing medical challenges or hospital stays. We all say it, and mean it, but we know they won’t take us up on. Not a matter of gratitude, help offers are always appreciated. And support is likely needed, but they likely don’t have the energy to muster up suggestions, coordinate care, or give the deeply vulnerable response, “Yes, please help us.”
Our family has known adoption and medical challenges, and our village of loved ones has gently and intentionally placed us on a mat and heaved us over their heads for carrying. From our position perched on the shoulders of others, we were taught to graciously say yes to receiving offered blessings.
Early on, a wise mentor urged, “Take me at my word. Let’s not play the polite game. You need help. I can give it. Let’s not waste time here.” So, we submitted and learned to allow others in, and are better for dropping pretense, releasing obsessive control and forfeiting the polite game. Now there is a new intimacy within our village and we all get to participate in God’s storytelling.
But how can any of us show big support in ways that don’t max out our already maxed agendas? How can we be the village that rallies for these families? First, we remind ourselves that it’s not about perfection or about impressing. It’s about loving. It’s about sending the message that you will stand shoulder to shoulder in the hard places. It’s simply about showing up.
We were loved on in a host of creative ways, and our hope is to pay that forward. May these 20 suggestions spark ideas for ways your family can “carry the mat” for others. Whether they admit it or not, there most likely is need for physical and emotional support, so let’s be the village they need.
1. Meals. They might be capable of toasting some bread and scrambling up some eggs, but the gift of a meal is as much of an emotional blessing as it is physical help. We use Take Them a Meal for online coordination. The organizer sends out a calendar of sign-up slots. Volunteers can see what others are bringing and also get emailed reminders. Food equals love, friends. Many times when my family saw friends standing in our doorway with soup and salad, our hearts were lifted. It was their presence and their hugs that mattered even more than their ciabatta bread.
Meals do not need to involve your finest, most complicated recipes. Rotisserie chicken, bagged salad and fruit is a perfect meal. Think simple, kid-friendly food. This is not about exhausting yourself. It is about blessing by doubling your spaghetti dinner or half-ing a pot of chili.
Do consider giving a hug and dropping the meal at the door. The family will invite you in, but they are tired, or they are cocooning, or they have dinner time hungry kids.
2. Group Prayer. Get your friends, your life group, or your neighbors together to pray big, bold, out loud prayers prior to an adoption or surgery. It doesn’t have to be a big event, just a circle spilling their requests before the Lord.
3. Voxer Messages. Download the Voxer app on your phone and have your friends do the same. This app was a sweet lifeline during our long, out of state hospital stays. It works like voice texting, and allows an ongoing conversation that you can listen to, or record, when you get free moments. Uninterrupted, coherent phone conversations while in the hospital, or newly home with a traumatized child, are hard, but hearing the voice of those who love you is a spirit lifter. I might have spilled my guts in marathon Voxers a time or three.
4. Care Bags.
Adoption: Show up with a bundle of small gifts that demonstrate your acknowledgement of what they face. Our adoption support ministry gives flowers, chocolate, nuts and gum.
flowers: “Adoption is beautiful.”
chocolate: “It’s sweet.”
gum and nuts: “But it will stretch you beyond your comfort zone and make you nutty.”
Hospital Bags: Fill a bag with some comfort items for weary families spending days in sterile hospital rooms. Include things like chocolate, magazines, Kind bars, chapstick, fuzzy socks, chocolate, tea, grapes, nuts, hand lotion, a journal and pen, and more chocolate.
5. Hospital Visit. Always ask first if company would be a blessing. If it’s a yes, then show up to be shoulder to shoulder in support. Consider asking if you can pick up some non-cafeteria food. When you arrive with Starbucks or Chipotle, don’t be surprised if tears flow. Try keeping the visit to under an hour, as patients get tired easily.
6. Text Personal Videos/Knock Knock Jokes. Don’t have time to visit or whip up lasagna? No fear. Pull out your phone, tap record and have your kids, or your whole family, send a fun and encouraging video message. We send videos of the kids telling goofy knock-knock jokes. In the easiest way possible, you are “present” on a hard day. It’s not about perfection, it’s about connection.
7. Gift Cards. It can’t be denied, we all love them, and they are a big blessing to a family facing medical challenges or adoption transition. Think Starbucks, Chik-Fil-A, Subway, Panera, hospital meal cards, and restaurants that deliver. ITunes cards are a fun pampering of new songs and games to entertain us. If travel is required for surgery, gas gift cards help lighten financial burden.
8. Hospital, Ronald McDonald House, or at Home Mail. Send a card. It will matter. Kid art is the best.
9. Balloon, Flower or Cookie Bouquet Delivery. Ever watch a two year old receive a balloon on a string? Yea well, adults have that same reaction.
10. Text or Message. It means something for someone to remember where you are and what you are facing. You might not get an immediate response, but don’t think it too small an act. Don’t wait until you have the right, profound words to share. Just send your love.
Find the rest of the ideas over at No Hands But Ours.
