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I want to tell you a story about a miracle—a miracle of acting NOW to tell a loved one how much you care. During my women’s retreat two weeks ago, a woman who is together and bright and successful realized that one of the most important things missing from her life was her relationship with her sister. We talked for a while about what had caused them to drift apart and then envisioned a re-connection with meaning and depth.
This woman, we’ll call her Susan, had been busy raising her two boys (who are now grown), focusing on her career, and going about life as we all do, getting through each week intact. What she hadn’t done is to take a moment to step back and really look at her whole life and take stock of what was missing. Given time for reflection and the space to really check in with herself, Susan realized how deeply she cared about her sister and having a relationship her. So I challenged her to call her sister that moment and reach out. Her response was, “Now? You mean right now?” “Yes, right now”, was my reply.
Susan called her sister and had a conversation with her, sharing her hopes that they could re-establish the closeness that they had experienced in the past and they set a date in the near future to spend a day together. A sense of relief and hope was immediately apparent in Susan. It was obvious that she felt personally powerful for taking a stand for what is important to her.
Five days later Susan called me early in the morning with tears in her voice to tell me that her sister, who was fifty-nine, had died during the night of a massive heart attack. She had been at the hospital all night and was in shock and overwhelmed by grief, but Susan was also feeling a profound sense of gratitude that she had reached out before it was too late. They never got to spend their day together, but they had re-connected and that’s a memory Susan will always have. And she will not have the regret of wishing she had taken action and didn’t do it.
If you have someone whom you care about and with whom you have lost a meaningful relationship, don’t wait. Pick up the phone right now, yes, right now! Tell them you miss them and that you want to find a way to be close again. If they don’t respond positively, at least you will have done your part to reconnect and rebuild and you can live regret-free.
Reflection Questions:
1. Who do you care about, but have lost a meaningful connection with?
2. What is preventing you from reaching out?
3. If you knew that person was going to die tomorrow, would it give you the impetus to call?
This may sound macabre, but now imagine being at that person’s funeral, never having made the effort to reconnect. How do you feel? Don’t waste another minute. Take action now.
It took courage for Susan to pick up the phone and call her sister, but the miracle is that she did.
