It’s my job to build a relationship with my clients, all of whom are Central American immigrant mothers. In our first meeting, we often start with the basics: What do they do? How many kids do they have? How long have they been here? How much do they make? What social services are they currently using? These are the easy questions.
We try and work our way to the hard, deep stuff with time: What are their dreams and desires? What are their biggest needs and what are their obstacles? Many times, the first answer out of their mouths is superficial, just scratching the surface of what’s really inside their hearts. With each answer a small leak opens in the dam of emotions that sits sealed off in some deep corner of their heart. With each response, new leaks emerge, and with them come invitations for deeper, necessary questions. These are the questions that they are at once begging me to ask yet also running from, dreading having to give a response that reveals more pain.
There are some days I don’t want to ask the next question, for fear that the answer will break me. So I move on to something more trivial, something safe; I know the answer I hear will spare my conscience and allow me to enjoy the rest of my day in peace.
But, finally we arrive at the question that neither one of us wants me to ask. The breaking point. The question that gets at the heart of their struggle: What do you want to change about your life? Their answers, far from simple, often start simply with a desire to no longer suffer.
One of the fundamental challenges of the Christian life is the choice between allowing ourselves to be broken open—to enter into the suffering of another in order to give them our time, energy, and heart—or choosing to remain closed off and ignorant. Too often, I choose the latter. It’s self-preservation—preservation of my time, energy, and heart for other things. Perhaps my heart is so hardened that self-preservation simply becomes the only logical and efficient choice whenever I worry I’ll be stretched too thin emotionally or spiritually if I open myself up further.
If I ignore the question that hangs in the air, it will simply return to its hiding spot, retreating again to some deep corner of my client’s heart. I will return home from work with an unburdened conscience that gives hardly a thought to the day’s interaction. However, if I make the choice to ask this question, the answer will evoke years of stored up struggle and emotion in my client. This is the question that will break the dam, and it will all come flying, hurtling out toward me, making a mess of my office and of me, the “life coach” who is not quite equipped to handle its aftermath.
I have no sufficient answer to solve my client’s emotional, spiritual, physical, or financial needs. But, there is one thing I can do. I can let the dam break, the aftermath flowing where it will. I can choose to wade through the murky waters with them, even if these waters begin to break me open too. These are moments of near solidarity, perhaps the closest I’ll feel to walking alongside my clients the way that Christ walked alongside the poor and destitute of the gospels.
Every time I choose to ask that next question, the question I know will bring me into that uncomfortable space, I choose to be broken open again. And who else but Christ can put me back together in those moments?
It is through this openness to being broken by the experience of others that we truly “put on Christ” for others, and show what it means to live agape: the love for others that brings us closer to imitating the same self-sacrificial love that Christ showed for us.
Yet, how often I choose to stay silent, choosing self-preservation, sparing my conscience, and refusing to be broken by the dammed-up torrent that waits to be unleashed on me from the other side of my desk. I only ask God that he send me just a little bit of that grace that keeps me afloat when the dam breaks; and break it surely will if I choose to crack open my heart just a little bit too.
