Small Things with Great Love

I've been thinking lately about this: how can I spend more time focusing on other people and less time being so insular?  This book has been helpful:  Small Things with Great Love: Adventures in Loving Your Neighbor.  "Small Things" encourage you to love your neighbor (whether it's your literal neighbor or your "neighbor" across the globe) and act accordingly.  This can be done through your career, Christian ministry, community service, or just freestyle being kind to people.

"Small Things" make the point that service works best if it fits pretty naturally into your life -- meaning it uses your natural interests and aptitudes, and it takes place in communities where you feel drawn or have a natural fit -- but NOT meaning that there won't be sacrifice involved, or that the communities you're drawn to are going to look exactly like you.  This book is really understanding of life stage and personality / age / circumstantial limitations, but it encourages that everyone has something to offer.

I will be honest that right now, it's mostly just got me thinking, not doing.  As long as the kids are still in diapers, they are going to be my primary "act of service", and that's okay.  But someday not so far down the road, there will be a little more time for service work outside the home, and "Small Things" (as well as another book I recently read called The Missional Mom: Living with Purpose at Home & in the World) gave some really good questions for thinking about how best to incorporate service in your life.  [Note:  there is a lot more to these books than community service - they also encourage you to educate yourself about social justice issues, examine your spending and giving patterns, and lots of other things.]  Here are the questions:

• What is your deep gladness?   I deeply care about people having affordable and comprehensive access to health care. I care about alleviating poverty and the structural injustices that lead to poverty.  I like projects that benefits children (foster children, children living in poverty, children in need of better health care, etc.).   I love details - I like to read policy wonk articles carefully, I like to lose the forest for the trees when I have discussions with my husband.  I love to compete - whether it's litigation, sports, board games, you name it - I find activities more fun if there is a winner and a loser.  

• What are your talents, interests, opportunities you've been given?  The big one for me is that I have a law degree.  I'm hoping that when I get back to work, I can get a job with a public interest employer.  But even if not, there's always the opportunity to do pro bono legal work for people.  Another talent / interest I have is sports.  It's less obvious to me how this can be used to alleviate pain and suffering in the world, but I've seen other people do pretty amazing things with sports.  (Such as start a running club at a homeless shelter and train a team of women to run a half marathon; coach at-risk kids in team sports; etc.)  

• What's your pain?  I thought this was such a good question.  You have the best potential to bond with people deeply when you share the same pain rather than the same interests or accomplishments.  When I find out someone went to the same college as me or that they used to be a triple jumper, we can have a good conversation for 5 minutes and then we go our separate ways.  When I find out that someone else's child has special needs, and particularly if the needs are similar to my child's needs (ie pediatric surgeries, developmental delays, feeding tube), my heart goes out to them.  We may be totally different people with totally different lives, but if we have that in common, then I know that I understand some of their deepest fears, their deepest struggles, their hardest moments.  Shared pain bonds people in a way that other commonalities never can.   

• What are some of the particular communities you are placed in right now?  The book talks about how you can start integrating acts of service into your life right away if you identify the people who you already interact with on the regular.  I am a stay at home mom with a kid in preschool, so the people I see most regularly right now are other moms (at the library, play group, the park, school pick-up etc.); school staff; and therapists and doctors.  So these are the people who are in my "community", and I should think about how best to serve them.  Since I am pretty introverted, a good place to start would be striking up conversation with these people about their lives, rather than having purely functional interactions and otherwise staying in my shell.  

Once you've identified the answers to these questions, the idea is that you can start looking for service opportunities (formal or informal) that are a good fit for you.  I would love to hear other people answer any of these questions, or add questions to the list.


  -