Affirm or Evaluate

I have been re-reading a small book (69 pages) entitled BALCONY PEOPLE by Joyce Landorf Heatherley, who has a variety of inspirational books. One other book, SILENT SEPTEMBER, deals with constant pain.

This book was recommended by a cancer support group sponsored by CARTI, the area Central Arkansas Radiation Therapy Institute. This group holds luncheons in a nearby town, Mountain Home, for all cancer survivors, and caregivers, regardless of treatments. I only had surgery, the only treatment for kidney cancer, yet I am still welcome to take advantage of their luncheons and activities.

BALCONY PEOPLE is written to describe how to encourage and show your love and concern to others and affirmation of your love and respect for one another.

When you tell a person how you appreciate how well they clean your house, better than you ever could, that is affirming that person, but it is more than that, it is showing a certain kind of love for that person.

Conversely, there is the evaluator, unfortunately in the majority, who sums a person up and spits them out in rejection. There are evaluators whose job is to determine talent or qualifications for positions, but they can be affirmative.

The book I am re-reading is a second copy. I passed my first copy on to a person I felt needed it more than I did. But I wanted to refresh my memory of how to be an affirming person.

Although cancer survivors have need of affirming care, the survivor can also become an affirming person to others, especially other cancer survivors.

Of course, this philosophy is applicable in many life situations, not just cancer. How about a waiter/waitress who really serves you day after day in a friendly but attentive decorum; he/she really cares if your food is exactly what you expected, or the phlebotomist who has a special talent to hit that tiny vein (a most gifted person in my mind).

In the blogging world, we offer prayers and words of concern and encouragement.

It is wonderful to know there is a great and diverse group interested in each other .

However, this little book, written with references to organized religion, can help each of us be affirmers to those close to us everyday, our family, our friends, our business associates, our neighbors, the postal or newspaper delivery persons, the babysitter--the list can go on and on.

An Anonymous reading in the front to set the tone of the book is below; [not to be misunderstood, this booklet is written in the mode of our physical interaction with those persons in our everyday life---not the blogosphere. I am offering it simply because its message is imprinted in my mind.--NitWit1]

I WAS...

I was hungry and you formed a humanities club to discuss my hunger.

Thank you.

I was imprisoned and you crept off quietly to your chapel to pray for my release.

Nice.

I was naked and in your mind you debated the morality of my appearance.

What good did that do?

I was sick and you knelt and thanked God for your health.

But I needed you.

I was homeless and you preached to me of the shelter of the love of God.

I wish you'd taken me home.

I was lonely and you left me alone to pray for me.

Why didn't you stay?

You seemed so holy, so close to God, but I'm still very hungry, lonely, cold and still in pain.

Does it matter?

--Anonymous