Lovingkindness Embodied

“Staying vulnerable is a risk we have to take if we want to experience connection.”

Brene Brown

After my Uncle’s storm blew over, he looked spent and took his leave. Everyone offered a farewell in muted shock. There are plenty of people we might expect to blow their top in my family - this guy wasn’t one of them.

For whatever reason, and I suppose to no one’s surprise, I couldn’t let this go. I trailed behind him and leaned into the driver’s side door, my elbows and forearms screaming as they touched the hot metal of his Buick. He rolled down his window. I leaned in close.

“Uncle James, you do not seem to know this, but my mother loves you to pieces and you just devastated her. She admires you. She thinks you are the best Christian man she has ever known in her entire life and I have no reason to doubt her assessment. I don’t have any idea what happened in the past, but I am sure you have suffered more than she has over the years as a result of the decisions previous generations have made. My mom doesn’t have men in her life that she can call ‘good’. You’re it. Please fix this.”

I never saw him again. But I did learn that he fixed it with my mom. It didn’t take much because my mom was a primed pump ready to pour out her love on this older brother who was treated at best like a welcomed guest in her childhood home. My mother, a little acorn who, in my opinion, was not particularly well nourished herself and often lived in inhospitable conditions for growing lovingkindness, was a mighty oak tree of hesed.

Me? Not so much. I harbored resentment toward him. I am still cautious around folks claiming the label “good Christian.” But I have to give James credit; he made a wrong right. So although it was hurtful and messy, it turns out that my Uncle James was indeed a man capable of lovingkindness.

“Imperfections are not inadequacies; they are reminders that we’re all in this together.”

Brene Brown