No Cause for Celebration: Question Six of Ten

Taking The Dave Test during the Holiday 

Question Six: “Can I stop blowing smoke?”

Introduction to the series

Much of the last year was thread through with considerable loss.  My brother, Dave, battled a fatal brain cancer for nearly eight years and he died this last January as the result of a fall that was due in large part to his disease.  He would have been 58 years old in October.

In reaction to Dave’s quest to find a durable faith and supportive friends, I wrote a book called The Dave Test, which was just released by Abingdon Press.  The book distills Dave’s quest into ten questions that any of us can ask ourselves, when we are in one of life’s hard places or when we are trying to support those we love.  Whether that hard place revolves around divorce, death, unemployment, abuse, illness, or some other misfortune, I hope that the questions I ask and the answers the book offers will help us all sit a bit more easily with life’s ragged edges.

Over ten weeks I plan to apply the questions in The Dave Test to our preparation for the holidays.  At this time of year for many there is — as the expression goes — “no cause for celebration.”  But I am convinced that there is reason for hope and I don’t believe that we need to navigate the holidays alone.  I hope that the book and this application of The Dave Test’s principles to the holidays will help ease the sense of isolation that is so much a part of life for many of us at this time of year.

This week’s Dave Test question: “Can I stop blowing smoke?”

Have you ever tried to reassure someone in a hard place by lying to them, by “blowing smoke?”  I think all of us have at some point in life…because we were afraid that the truth would be discouraging or even devastating…because we thought that people would lose hope…or because we found it difficult to face the truth ourselves.  During the holidays, we are particularly prone to blowing smoke in order to preserve the nostalgic feelings — for ourselves and for others — that we associate with holiday celebrations.

As good or caring as our motives might be, there are multiple problems with managing the truth for others:

One, the truth of someone else’s life is not ours to manage.  When we insert ourselves into another person’s life and blow smoke, we act like a “little god,” managing, if not creating an alternative reality for them.  We take control of decisions that are not ours to make by shaping the perceptions that shape the decisions they make.

Two, we postpone the inevitable.  If someone has suffered a genuine loss, sooner or later they will grasp the truth and by that time they will have lost precious time needed to come to grips with reality.  Rather than work through the reality, they begin by working their way through our smoke screen.

Three, when we blow smoke we sever the relationship between love and the truth.  The truth, without love can be harsh, if not unbearable.  But love without the truth degenerates into controlling pity.

By contrast, holding both love and truth together in a single act of caring for those who are struggling with the frayed edges of life is the best gift that we can give one another during the holidays.  This year, let’s trade our obsession with trouble-free nostalgia for memories made where we are, in the full acknowledgement of the complexities that are our lives.  It may seem counterintuitive or impossible.  It’s definitely not easy.  It requires attention to the truth and unflinching love.  But the best holiday memories we can ever make are memories made by embracing one another as we are, without blowing smoke.