Life Lesson- Cam style

Some of you may not know this, but I am a pastor's kid.

Not just *a* pastor's kid.

The most reverend P. Cameron Kirker. Ok... I kid. But he is the most fabulous dad, btw.

That being said, I learned a lot of valuable things along the way of my life, because of that fact. There are things you learn growing up in a pastor's home that you just wouldn't learn otherwise. They range from the details (i.e. when dad would have to keep a list of when he'd worn which suit because he had to wear one nearly every day and didn't want to run the risk of doubling up the grey suit two Sundays in a row) to the life stuff. The hard life stuff... when you show up to love a friend who just lost a wife. You don't say anything, necessarily. You just show up and it makes a difference.

Well, lately, I feel as though I have been around some really hurting people. I actually count that as an honor. Its easy to be around folks when they're happy. Moreso, its easy to allow people in when you're happy. But it is a whole new ball game when you allow folks to rally around when in the depths of despair (to borrow a phrase from Anne of Green Gables.)

A phrase I was taught early to avoid was this: "I know how you feel". Cam would cringe when he heard someone utter those words in the face of specific pain. The truth is, we don't know. We don't all share the exact same circumstances and we can't know *exactly* how someone feels, however similar we think it to be. When did that phrase become an acceptable condolence?

So, I shuttered as I watched the Today Show yesterday (I know... it was before Fresh Prince, don't worry.. all is as it should be) and heard a mom say to another, "I know how you feel".  The circumstances of the interview were horrifying. A girl lies in a coma in Deerfield Beach, FL (where I lived after being born, no less!) all because a male classmate brutally beat her. The details are jumbled but it sounds like he just snapped and reacted to words the girl said. Regardless, she's in a coma... healing and fighting for her life. She may end up a vegetable if she lives. He is facing the possibility of being tried as an adult and losing freedom for the rest of his life. The boy's mother had the nerve to say to the girl's mother that she knew exactly how she felt.

I had to sit down on my bed. Stop what I was doing and throw my hands up in the air (for effect) and say, "NO YOU DON'T."

I think it is insensitive and rude to make someone else's pain about me. That's what that phrase begs, after all... "why? Tell me." How sad.

I don't even have a specific reason this struck such a deep chord with me. I just hope that, the next time someone shares pain with me, I lend them a shoulder to cry on, a listening ear and not much more.