Is this conversation familiar to you?

“Hi!  How are you doing?”

“Fine, how are you?”

“Oh, I’m okay.”

“Good talking with you, have a good day.”

“Yeah, you too.”

How about this one? Seem familiar?

“I just heard what happened! I’m so sorry. Is there anything I can do to help?”

“Thank you, no, we are fine.”

“Well, if you can think of anything, please don’t hesitate to call me.”

Have you ever been one of the participants in such conversations? Do you feel like you have at least offered your help or showed some concern with either conversation?

I have, almost daily.

Part of my job is answering a customer service phone line. It’s unbelievable how many times the conversations start with, “Hi, how are you today?”  I can get pretty frustrated, because they don’t really want to know.  They don’t want to know that my ankles hurt so badly I can barely walk on them in the mornings, or that I didn’t sleep last night so I’m falling asleep at the keyboard now, or that my son just called and he really doesn’t want to go to school today and I have to somehow convince a 17 year old over the phone that he does in fact have to go to school, or that I have about 10 bills due that I have to figure out how to pay, or ……  I think you get the picture.

It’s programmed into us to ask insincere questions and respond with insincere answers.  It’s a canned response that we give without a second thought when we greet people.

But I wonder…what if we really asked because we really wanted to know how someone was doing or what we could really do for someone during a time of need?

I just had a friend ask me how I was doing. While I responded with a canned response, I also went on from there and had a moment of a real conversation with her. Her husband had recently had surgery, her father had recently passed away, her family was hurting in ways that I knew about, and she was about to become a grandmother. I could have chosen any number of things to show genuine concern because I am genuinely concerned about her. Even after she walked off I thought of her circumstances and prayed.

That’s what genuine concern does. It reaches out, it takes part, it lifts up, it encourages, it stands in the gap, it takes a moment and gives space for someone else’s tears. Genuine concern asks you a second time, while making eye contact, “How are you really doing?”

I was recently at an event that was emotional for me, but I tried to keep those emotions pressed down. I made it through the event just fine, but afterwards, as the place was clearing out, one of the workers asked me how I was doing. She knew the event was stressful for me. She knew that I had to revisit memories of recently lost loved ones.

I gave the canned response and continued to prepare to exit the building as quickly as possible. But I was stopped by this sweet lady taking my hands.

She stilled my busyness, touching me, forcing me to make eye contact and then she asked again, “How are you really?”

The tears came then because truthfully, I wasn’t okay.

In that moment, I found healing. Suddenly about 7 women surrounded me, all touching me somehow, all crying with me, all understanding completely without words the pain I was in. There was community in the truth.  There was a sisterhood that connected us, because none of us are as “fine” as we say.

It only lasted for a few moments, but I was forever changed. No longer can I give the canned response and no longer can I ask the question unless I really want to take time to find out how someone is.

Like the beggar outside the Temple…

Now Peter and John were going up together to the temple complex at the hour of prayer at three in the afternoon.  And a man who was lame from birth was carried there and placed every day at the temple gate called Beautiful, so he could beg from those entering the temple complex. When he saw Peter and John about to enter the temple complex, he asked for help. Peter, along with John, looked at him intently and said, “Look at us.” So he turned to them, expecting to get something from them. But Peter said, “I don’t have silver or gold, but what I have, I give you: In the name of Jesus Christ the Nazarene, get up and walk!” Then, taking him by the right hand he raised him up, and at once his feet and ankles became strong. So he jumped up, stood, and started to walk, and he entered the temple complex with them —walking, leaping, and praising God.

Acts. 3:1-8 HCSB

The beggar wasn’t expecting anything other than what he had always been given…. little attention and little time. But Peter and John stopped, made eye contact, gave space to someone else’s need, and changed a life.

What if, instead of asking what we can do to help someone, we just show up with dinner one night? We knock on the door of a friend going through a rough time and offered to watch the kids while she takes a bath, do the dishes and put on a load of laundry? What if, instead of passing people by, we actually stopped and chatted with them, listening more than speaking? What if, we truly made space for other people in our schedule?

What if we just simply made eye contact and asked with a sincere heart,

“How are you really?”

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