Blog Reading as a Gift

We are so grateful to you for caring enough to walk with us through any part of this experience. In The Road Less Traveled, Scott Peck says that the primary work of love is attention. Time and attention is ultimately the currency of caring, the main way that we can show love. If we’re not affected by what happens to another and don’t invest energy to know them, then we’re probably not very close.

Blogger shows us interesting stats on page views. For example, we’ve been shocked to see hits from strangers in Russia and Europe. I was disappointed initially by how few friends cared enough to check out the blog at all. Beth and I have hundreds of friends and family on FB or who otherwise knew about the blog, but fewer than we expected looked during the first few days. I thought more might at least click once, just out of idle curiosity. The numbers have gone up since, but only a handful of our closest friends follow it regularly.

That’s perfectly OK, even expected now. Every reader is just one more happy bonus beyond my reset expectations. The blog’s purpose isn’t high readership – it’s a processing tool and a place to grab an occasional detail update if we haven’t talked, and there are many reasons for limited page views. It’s a negative topic that sucks energy, and ain’t nobody want to see us psychically naked. The writing is at times poor, dense, or tangential to updates on Chelsey’s progress. Reading blogs is not for everybody – even our parents just pick up the phone. We quickly let go of expectations of friends reading. The friends who don’t read are still important and valued, and we may be close to them in other ways.

However, that makes us value you all the more for making the effort to follow along. Knowing that somebody cares about the experience and values what we have to say means so much. Even if we never hear a word, a page view takes the edge off the sense of facing the problem alone.

Rachel Naomi Remen (Kitchen Table Wisdom) tells a related little story. A woman, Jessie, has a crisis and drives herself to the ER, throwing up repeatedly on the way. She spends the entire next day in the ER by herself without ever calling anybody. She did not want to bother them, and the friends didn’t have any expertise that would help fix her symptoms.

“Jessie,” I said, “even children instinctively run to others when they fall down.” With a great deal of heat Jessie said, “Yes, I’ve never understood that. It’s so silly. Kissing the boo-boo doesn’t help the pain at all.” I was stunned. “Jessie,” I said, “it doesn’t help the pain, it helps the loneliness.”

Thank you for caring enough to read about our world.