In many homes, it is a tradition to go around the table just before enjoying the Thanksgiving meal, and say what you are most grateful for. Good health and relationships with loved ones usually top the list. Given the choice between good health and good relationships with the people we love, I think most of us would actually choose the latter. Whether it is the relationships we have with our children, our spouse, close friends, or other family members, what matters most to us is the people we love.
I recently visited a dear friend of mine in the hospital. He has been fighting cancer for a little over one year. As we talked, he mentioned over and over again how much his wife and daughter mean to him.
Despite the fact that his body has been weakened by this disease, it seemed to me that his spirit had never been stronger. He knows what and for whom he is fighting.
He is fighting cancer, but his wife and daughter are who he is fighting for. He is fighting to live out his life with them. He is fighting to be there for them in the ways that they need him and want him to be. There is nothing that matters more to him. I believe that it is his love for his wife and daughter, as well as their love for him, that have sustained him this far and helped him beat the medical odds.
Dr. Bernie Siegel, the author of Love, Medicine and Miracles, believes that “unconditional love is the most powerful known stimulant of the immune system. If I told patients to raise their blood levels of immune globulins or killer T cells, no one would know how. But if I can teach them to love themselves and others fully, the same changes happen automatically. The truth is: love heals”.
The opposite is also true. That is, when we are deprived of love or separated from the ones we love most, our immune systems plummet. Loneliness and loss contribute to serious health problems, such as high blood pressure and heart disease. There are even documented cases of people suffering heart attacks as a result of their grief from losing a loved one. Infants in orphanages in Eastern Europe after WWII who had their nutritional and medical needs met, but were not held regularly by caregivers died in significantly higher numbers than those infants who received regular physical and emotional nurturing from their caregivers.
The research is clear: are emotional needs are inextricably connected with our physiology and our ability to thrive in this world. We need each other. That may a difficult thing for some people to admit, because in order to survive, they have had to convince themselves that they do not need anyone else. But we are all born with an innate desire to connect to other human beings: to turn to them for comfort, reassurance and support. We need to know that we matter to someone.
The problem is that for some people, when they reached out for support, no one was there. For too many, the lesson that “I can’t rely on any one to really care about me or to really be there for me when I need them” is a lesson that was learned early. In order to survive, they then shut down those needs or seek to fulfill those needs in ways that are destructive to themselves and/or others.
Studies on people who have been able to be resilient and defy the odds by rising above the negative circumstances of their childhood, have found that these resilient people all have one thing in common: they all had at least one person who believed in them and was there for them. This person could be a coach, a teacher, a grandparent, a friend…it didn’t matter what the relationship was. What mattered was that despite the rough beginnings of not having any one to turn to, these resilient people had found at least one person to whom they could turn for comfort in their adolescence or early adulthood. They had
found at least one person who loved them and who they could feel safe enough to love back. As Dr. Siegal say, “love heals”.
This Thanksgiving, my thoughts and my heart have been filled with gratitude for the gift that my friend and his wife gave me of being able to spend that time with him in the hospital. I am grateful for the tender moments of life like this that God grants us to focus on what matters most. I am grateful for the opportunity I was given to see first hand that “love heals”. I do not know how long my friend has left in this life, no more than I know how long I or anyone of us has left. What I do know is that the love of his wife and daughter have healed him in ways that no therapy or medical treatment could have. His body may be weakened, but his spirit has been made whole from his love for his family and their love for him.
I am so thankful for the people in my life who I love and who love me back. I am grateful for the people who have been there for me through the years for me to turn to for comfort when I had trouble believing in myself. I am grateful for the people in my life today who allow me into their lives and into their hearts.
