You can't know if you don't ask.

Recently, on a ball field in my town, I was chatting with one of the dads. I hadn't seen his wife for while, which didn't seem unusual. Two working parents, two young kids, your typical busy family. I said to this man something so callous, like: "Where's your wife been hiding, I haven't seen her in forever?"

His response made my stomach churn. She hadn't been feeling well and they were having a hard time figuring out what was going on, despite involving numerous health care providers.

This possibility hadn't even crossed my mind. 

So often we are stuck in our own worlds to the degree that we don't even take notice of what's happening in the world around us. And I'm not talking about the bigger world and feeling bad about not being involved in social justice or the myriad of other causes we might choose to dedicate energy to. I'm talking about the people in our community, in our circles, on our streets. The ones we see without really seeing. 

We do need to take care of ourselves before we can serve others. And yet, people around us, people we see each week, are suffering and we don't even know it. There were many opportunities to ask about this mom, to notice that I hadn't seen her at all in weeks, before I did. 

We make the assumption that everyone else has everything figured out while we are still trying to get the laundry that was done five days ago back into the drawers. But it's simply not true. I don't care if that person drives one of those huge, extravagant SUVs or shows up for every school event with vegan cupcakes. Every single one of us is suffering in some way and sometimes people are going through difficult times right under our noses. If we don't ask how people are doing, we can't know. If we don't know, we can't help. 

This conversation on the baseball field reminded me of all this. When I'm suffering all I want is for someone to reach out and say: I see you, keep going, I have faith in you.

Let's do that for others too.