In this episode, Nathan reminisces about his idyllic farm life during his childhood. The narrative takes an emotional turn as he shares the traumatic story of the death of their pet dog while operating farm machinery. This event leads Nathan to discuss the delicate balance between shielding one’s loved ones from pain versus allowing them to learn from difficult experiences. He uses the example of Corrie Ten Boom, a famous Holocaust survivor, to enhance this point. Nathan closes the podcast by emphasizing the importance of love as a guiding force in processing, understanding and transcending past suffering.
In this episode, Nathan reminisces about his idyllic farm life during his childhood. The narrative takes an emotional turn as he shares the traumatic story of the death of their pet dog while operating farm machinery. This event leads Nathan to discuss the delicate balance between shielding one’s loved ones from pain versus allowing them to learn from difficult experiences. He uses the example of Corrie Ten Boom, a famous Holocaust survivor, to enhance this point. Nathan closes the podcast by emphasizing the importance of love as a guiding force in processing, understanding and transcending past suffering.
Podcast 74- Sharing Pain, Sharing Love
Hello, my friends. When I was a kid, we lived on a farm and we had what I thought was an idyllic life at the time. I can remember running around all the time, going behind my dad as he changed the water in the little ditch that irrigated our field. I remember the tall green boots--- we called them milking boots--- I wore those for a lot of my life--- that I would wear to keep my feet nice and dry while I walked in the water behind him. The water always looked clear and beautiful and like something that I could drink, though a lot of it had traveled through at least one cow pasture or more and was probably really poisonous. I didn't drink any and I didn't die. My dad said that when he was a kid, he looked out across a pasture one time, full of grass, where the cows were grazing contentedly, and they had turned irrigation water onto the field, which meant they would just flood the field with water--- maybe four to six inches deep--- for a while and let it soak in and water all the grass and things so that the cows would have something to eat. One morning when dad was young, he thought that looked so beautiful, and he would watch the sunlight sparkling off that clear water on that field. So he got down on his hands and knees and took a nice drink out of that. He didn't die either, so. Miracles still happen. Anyway, one day I was out on a swather, we called it, or a windrower. It's a machine that has long knife-like blades, maybe 12 or 16 feet wide, and those blades overlap. They're a sawtooth shape. The two blades overlap and go along fairly close to the ground, maybe three or four inches off the ground, and they cut the hay. Another part of the machine then gathers the hay and drops it behind the machine in rows we call windrows. Those rows let the hay dry until it can be baled and the cows can eat it.
The smell of that fresh cut alfalfa and the beauty of watching it fall under the blade and come out in a neat row behind the machine was fascinating to me. I loved riding with my dad. One day I was in that windrower with my dad, driving along watching the hay as it was cut and sucked into the machine with a large rotating rake, where it would be so perfectly processed. As I looked out over it, I saw something moving in the field and realized that running toward us was our little doggie, a little puppy that we had named Pepper. We loved Pepper. I realized that Pepper was in danger of coming in front of that machine, and I screamed something to my dad, who immediately tried to shut the thing off, but it was too late. All four of Little Pepper's legs were gone. That machine had come right underneath him, and the injury was, of course, soon to be fatal. But he wasn't gone yet. I remember watching my father scoop that little puppy up and conceal him from my view. He ran into the house, got some towels, and wrapped that poor little dog up.
I ran into the house crying--- I was only six years old--- and told my mom what had happened. She and my younger siblings ran to see what was going on, but Dad wouldn't allow us to be near little Pepper. Instead, he took that little dog out into the garage and did what a strong and sensitive man would do, and he ended that little puppy's life before it could suffer too much more.
I've thought about that a lot as I've grown older. I've thought about what it means to shield people from things that are difficult, versus allowing them to understand and learn from things that are difficult. That balance can be hard. Sometimes we don't know where to draw the line. What should we allow ourselves or others to experience, and from what should we be shielded?
One of the best answers to that question comes from a woman named Corrie Ten Boom. If you're not familiar with her, she survived Nazi concentration camps during World War II. Her experiences were horrific and difficult, but she wrote a book called The Hiding Place, talking about that concentration camp as the place where her faith and her joy and her understanding increased more than at any other time in her life. It's hard to even imagine that. I recommend you read the book.
She talked about that same concept with regard to teaching children The Facts of Life. She
She said, and this is a quote, " and so seated next to my father in the train compartment, I suddenly asked, Father, what is sex sin? He turned to look at me, as he always did when answering a question, but to my surprise he said nothing. At last he stood up, lifted his traveling case off the floor, and set it on the floor.
Will you carry it off the train, Corey? He said. I stood up and tugged at it. It was crammed with all the watches and spare parts that he had purchased that morning. It's too heavy, I said. Yes, he said. And it would be a pretty poor father who would ask his little girl to carry such a load. It is the same way, Corey, with knowledge. Some knowledge is too heavy for children. When you are older and stronger, you can bear it. For now, you must trust me to carry it for you."
Sometimes in life, as parents, as children, as employees, as spouses, as friends, we don't know how much to share. How vulnerable should we be? And how much of our burden should be carried by someone else? With the lessons I learned watching my father that morning, and reading the story of Corrie Ten Boom, and thinking about the experiences of my own life, I have decided that a lot of the balance depends on what our motive really is.
If It can be helpful to protect one's spouse or loved one from too much of what we are suffering, but it's not a bad idea to let them know that we are. If you're struggling with depression, sadness, fear of the future, anger, guilt, or any other thing, letting people who love you know that that's going on is a good thing. They can help you bear your burdens. When it goes too far is when you expect them to bear the burden, or when you can see that they are prone to bear the burden themselves; one that is not really theirs to carry.
Those of you who are empaths may struggle in this area. I know it's been a struggle for me. Sometimes when I'm working with someone and trying to help them overcome negative emotions, experiences from the past, fear, anger, hurt, guilt, or any other thing, I find myself taking those on as though they were my own. At the end of the day, I'm emotionally and physically exhausted. And I have to remember: that's not mine to bear. It's not my experience. It's their experience. To help someone, really, is to help them bear the burdens that are theirs, not to take those burdens on as our own, and just suffer with them. That's really not what is meant. And so, we can shield people as an act of love. We can help them see that we were struggling too, but they don't need to bear our pain, and we don't need to bear theirs.
To bear one another's burdens, as I have said before, is to help them carry or lift them, but they're still theirs, not ours. I watched my dad when he came back into the house after his experience in the garage. Tears were streaming down his face. I remember loving him for his compassion. I remember thinking, even as a six year old boy, my dad loved that little dog.
And then I thought, my dad loves me. He didn't want me to be afraid or hurt by what he saw, and so he helped me not carry something that was a little too heavy for a six year old.
You will undoubtedly, throughout your life, experience things that are really too heavy for even you. Or you will know people who have experienced things that are far more than they should have had to experience at that age. You can help them by helping shield them from too much pain. You can help them by helping them find what is beautiful and good about what they learn from the experience. I love what I learned about my dad. I love what I learned about parenting. I love what I learned about love. I love the fact that I can still think of that beautiful field full of alfalfa, and think of it as something wonderful. I still remember the smells and the sounds and the time that I spent with my father. I remember that experience now not as something to relive with horror, but as something to learn from and be grateful for. Not grateful for the suffering of that little dog. Not grateful for the suffering of my dad. But grateful that I can learn about his soul and mine from that experience.
Quoting again from Corrie Ten Boom: "Do you know what hurts so very much? It's love. Love is the strongest force in the world, and when it is blocked, that means pain. There are two things that we can do when this happens. We can kill that love so that it stops hurting, but then of course part of us dies too. Or we can ask God to open up another route for that love to travel."
I encourage you to look at every good thing that you can possibly find and pursue it. Love and learning are for the future, not for the past. You can't erase the experiences you've had, even if you want to. But you can learn from them, profit from them, and learn to love from them. Love is the only true emotion. Everything else is a derivative of fear.
If I can help you learn how to love better, and how to reinterpret those things that you still hang on to that are difficult for you to process, understand, or get rid of, make sure you get hold of me. You can find me on Instagram at @natesschoolofthought, or on the web at natewalkercoaching.com. I hope to hear from you.
We'll talk again soon.