Adler Utley (Addy) is a 7-year-old boy who loves all things striped – especially striped socks. When Addy was diagnosed with Stage 3 Wilms Tumor (a rare kidney cancer) in March, his entire first grade class at Alpine Elementary wore striped socks to school. Sara Utley (Addy’s mom) wrote, “What a thing of beauty to behold… People are so, so good! Even now, on chemo days, Addy pulls on his brightest pair of stripes and onward we march.”
A large tree stands in the Utley’s front yard, brightly adorned with stripes in Addy’s honor. The tree, decorated by his loved ones, offers comfort and cheer during these arduous months of chemotherapy. Adler’s mom tells me that on most evenings, the tree is the last thing he talks about before bed. It has made a difference.
There’s something irresistible about people joining together and reaching out to one another, especially when life gets grim. It doesn’t have to be anything grandiose. Mother Teresa spoke of a pure kind of love that “doesn’t measure, it just gives”. Thomas Merton described a selfless love that gives “without stopping to inquire whether or not others are worthy.” In its most genuine state, love’s message is, “Your burden is my burden. Your sorrow is mine. Your hopes, your fears, your joys, they are mine too. Take my hand, let’s walk together.”
Life can be ugly – there’s no sense pretending otherwise (and I don’t mean we should dwell on it). Cancer is ugly. Vomiting and exhaustion from chemotherapy are ugly. Abuse, illness, self-harm, disease, accidents – they’re all ugly. There’s more suffering in this world than most of us allow ourselves to see. But something beautiful happens when we join together. Our very togetherness creates beauty. It’s not beauty in spite of the terrible, but in the midst of it, perhaps even because of it.
Sometimes we think if we care too much we’ll end up empty-handed or depleted – as if love is a commodity exchanged in a zero-sum game. Love is not limited the same way our time and resources are limited. People don’t just ‘run out of love’ because they’ve offered it freely to others – at least I don’t believe genuine love works that way. Real, selfless love can grow and grow. It grows by giving (it also grows by receiving, but that’s a tangent for another day). There’s no upper limit (that I know of) to how much a person can love.
I’ve tried to mimic love. Sometimes I’ve outwardly pretended to care when what I really cared about was racking up gold stickers for my Chore Chart in the Sky (as if anything meaningful could ever be about keeping score). Sometimes I’ve cared more about looking like someone who cares. Other times I’ve wished for recognition and gratitude in return (which is another way of saying that I would take love back if it wasn’t received in the right way). On occasion I’ve tried to pump up loving feelings in myself by thinking about love with no real person or concrete sacrifice involved, just abstract mental indulgence. I’ve even smothered people because I cared more about loving for the sake of loving instead of caring about the real person. It won’t surprise you to hear that none of these counterfeits delivered the return I expected – and all because of one common denominator: Deep down, they were all about ME.
When you find yourself thinking about a reward for love you’ve lost the real thing. I used to believe that anyone could love. I still believe this, but now I believe that expressing love is harder for some people and easier for others – for many reasons, both seen and unseen. But I think, overall, we tend to underestimate ourselves. We don’t need any special intelligence or skill to see the humanity in others or to offer an outstretched hand. We can know how to help each other because we are all human. I know what pain feels like – and fear, anxiety, embarrassment, and loneliness. We all do. We are so much more alike than we are different.
We might be hesitant to share another’s burdens, but think how much harder life is when we don’t. Sometimes we’re the giver, other times the needy – sides aren’t really so important. What’s important is taking the road together. The cost may seem high, but the price we pay for not caring is one of the highest. We can’t see the end, and we may not have very many answers, but those aren’t reasons to not reach out. Take my hand, I’m walking too. It’s our togetherness – our WE – that makes life beautiful.
If you would like to help Addy, please visit http://www.gofundme.com/thisisadler
Or you can read his Mom’s blog about this journey (she has a beautiful writing voice, by the way).
And check out this video McKay Utley made for his little brother:
Wow! Lovely post. “When you look for a reward for love, you’ve lost the real thing.”