The ‘everything else’

A couple of months ago, I found myself pushing around a shopping cart at a grocery store in the middle of the day in search of soup and other soft comfort foods for a woman who just had her teeth pulled.

This day was one of those days in the work of walking alongside people in recovery — chaotic, exhausting, and challenging — all at once, all at the same time, and with more to do than 24 hours in a day could possibly handle.

So initially, the task of shopping for groceries seemed like the most insignificant thing on my to-do list, but regardless, there I was in the store with this task ahead of me.

I started thinking about ‘little’ things — like this shopping task — and about the person it was for: A woman who had come to us for a safe place to stay before going to treatment, and a place to support her as she started to address her health in this new season of life.

In the journey of recovery, people are often required to stand at the edge of their courage, ready to harness all of what‘s inside of them to do hard things just like this — the brace-what’s-next and face-what’s-next kind of things.

They’re not always big things, either, but they’re things nonetheless, the things that often fall through the cracks when it comes to formal services, programs and resources available to us — like an unexpected appointment, how you’re going to get there, and who’s going to take care of you when you’re in pain.

This, as I like to think of it, is the ‘everything else.’

Thankfully, somewhere between the front door and the bakery, I started to have a change of heart. Regardless of what you believe or if you personally call it the Spirit or a realization, that’s what happened.

As I was looking through different brands of mashed potatoes, I remember feeling all of my other anxieties go on pause. I started to get tears in my eyes, thinking about the texts I’d received during the day detailing the kind of pain this woman was in at the very moment I was shopping for her.

In that moment, the gift we have as humans to feel empathy was suddenly coursing through my veins, dissolving disdain for the task, and instead, feeling her pain and thinking about what it is that would make me feel comforted if I was in her shoes.

I would simply want to know that other people cared that I was in pain;
I would want to know that they cared about me.

The small, simple things like this shopping trip can often be the biggest perspective-shifters. I was suddenly standing in that store, thinking about everything it means to be cared for and valued, and about unconditional love where nothing is too small or mundane.

Meanwhile, as I walked around the grocery store, Brittany, a friend in this work, was simultaneously sitting in an emergency room with this same woman, tending to her pain, helping fill the gaps in the system, and offering the profound simplicity of her presence on a hard day.

In long-term recovery herself, she shares a story from her early days of recovery when she was going through withdrawal in the hospital. In this moment of pain, a nurse stayed with her, too, offering her presence and rubbing Brittany’s legs as a small, quiet gesture as if to say ‘you are not alone in this.’

When I hear stories like hers, and experience moments like we both did that day, I often wonder if the smallest gestures like these are the moments that end up meaning the most to us in the big picture of our lives.

Moments when a person simply stops, pauses and rests right alongside of us in our moment of pain, in that moment when we stand at the edge of our courage. Those quiet, sacred moments when they are simply with us — a gesture that seems to whisper the reassurance we all need the most, “We are with you,’ and ‘You’re not alone.’

A few weeks before that day, another friend in this work, David, spoke up in a meeting to talk about a gentleman staying at Doc’s House who was early in his recovery. This man was motivated to reconcile with his family, and spent a considerable amount of time talking about his son and his talents in sports.

“You know, it would really mean a lot to him if we could get him to one of his son’s games,” David offered.

A week or so later, the trip was planned, and the two of them made the three hour round-trip drive to get him to one of his son’s hockey games.

This small gesture acknowledged something simple and sacred, something set apart from anything planned in our program, but arguably more important.

Again, the ‘everything else.’

Because while the formal programs, resources and services are necessary along a person’s journey of recovery, they are just a part of it.

In totality, we have the opportunity to see the full picture, the ‘everything else,’ like their hobbies and talents, the love and pride they have for their family, and the way their eyes light up when they talk about their son.

Unfortunately, in anything that resembles a system, it’s this, our ‘everything else,’ that is often left out, putting us at risk of becoming things and not people, outcomes and not human beings.

But we are human beings — unique, one-of-a-kind, infused with purpose, potential, and worth, waiting for others to see us, acknowledge us, and speak hope into us.

So, as I walked around the store that afternoon, I thought these thoughts, somehow all in an instant, and my eyes welled up with tears and my heart pulsed with gratitude and perspective.

“What an honor to be here in this,” I thought to myself.

Because in the moments at the edge of courage, when the ‘everything else’ has the power to cause a recoil of fear that we aren’t capable of leaning in or don’t have what it takes, or that the things that make us who we are aren’t being seen, the most powerful force is often the voice of the person beside us saying,

‘We are with you and for you,
Here in the systems,
But also in the ‘everything else.’