Star Light Ministries

How do you feel when you’re in pain? How do you feel when someone else is in pain? A couple of examples…

A few days ago I wore a pair of shoes that are not walking shoes. And then I went walking. About 2/3 through the day, I noticed a big blister on the top of my second toe (the one next to the thumb of the toe world). It hurt. Every step I took it hurt more. It felt like a tiny rock inside the top of my shoes. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow.

Relatively minor pain, eh? How did I feel? Well, I wanted to fix it. Make it stop. So, I popped my shoes off in the parking lot of the store I was walking in, and walked the rest of the way to my car without my shoes. Problem solved. No more pain.

But what about deeper pain? I met a manager at a club recently who was in serious emotional pain. A relationship had just ended. He was really sad, kinda drunk, and just in deep pain. So how should a person respond to his pain? Well, our obvious response to it is to figure out a way to fix it, solve it, make the pain end. Some typical responses might include:

saying something like “You’re going to learn a lot from this.”
responding with a “This will be over soon.”
suggesting, “The only way to get over a woman is to get under another one,” or a similar thing like, “There are other fish in the sea. You’ll find someone else.”
adding our own story, “I’ve been there, and let me tell you about my pain.”

But does this solve pain? Quite the opposite, it usually adds to it. Trite, empty phrases typically leave people feeling like a cliché: trite and empty. Any of these phrases minimizes the pain that the person you’re talking to is going through. When you take the focus off of the person, and bring it on yourself, then you have made their pain seem unimportant, even worse, you’ve made them feel unimportant.

So how should we respond?

Stay in the pain. Don’t minimize it.
Feel the pain with the person. You may even recollect the time you were in pain. How did you feel? But don’t tell the person that, just remember the feeling. Empathize.
Ask questions. Keep the focus on the person you’re talking to.
Don’t try to fix it. Just listen.
Stay in the moment.

There is value in the phrase Misery loves company. None of us likes to be pushed to solve our pain. None of us likes to be alone in it, either. Share our pain with us. Walk with us in it. Stay with us.

Have you ever wondered how the downturn in the economy effects women who are exotic dancers?

I’ve wondered, too, and while I don’t have any statistics on it, I’d like to tell you what happened to me in a club last week, on a marathon day where I visited 6 clubs.

I talked with one manager about the Exotic Dancer, M.B.A. program. He was enthusiastic about it, thought it was a great idea, but he didn’t think any of the dancers would come.

“Why not?” I asked. Instead of answering directly, he stopped a dancer walking out of the club. “Starry Night?” he asked, “How much money did you make today?” Starry Night answered, “It was the best day I’ve had in a while…I made $75 after tip out.”

The manager turned back to me. “They can’t afford $50.”

The manager went on to say that he thinks it has to do with the economy.

Yesterday was my 40th birthday. As birthdays go, it was a really wonderful one, with many messages from many wonderful friends. A day of love. I thank you all.

It’s impossible not to spend some time on your 40th birthday reflecting on your life. I asked myself, “Am I happy? Am I doing what I want to do with my life? Am I making the difference I want to make? What’s important to me, and does my life reflect this?”

As a result of recent work with an Executive Coach, Cary Kelly, I have identified the purpose of my life: to offer acceptance to everyone I meet. I grew up with an understanding that God loved me because God had to, but that perhaps God didn’t like me very much. You’ve heard it before from religious folks, haven’t you? God loves you, but you have to change so that God can accept you?

That’s not how I experience God anymore. I think that even more than loving us, God accepts us, who we are, how we are, what we do, all of it. It’s deeper than, “I love you but don’t like you.” It’s actually more like “I think you’re the neatest person I have ever met!” (Okay, yeah, I think God uses words like “neat.”)

And as a result of that deep acceptance by God, I figure that the best use of my time and energy is to spread that around. And that is what I’m doing with my life. The amazing thing about it is that it’s so much fun! A few weeks ago, a dancer on on a stripper forum suggested that Star Light has an agenda, based on her assumption that all of religion has an agenda. She wrote, they have “an agenda disguised in compassion.” Yes, we have an agenda (offering acceptance). Now that’s the kind of criticism I’m willing to have every day!

My favorite part of my birthday was going to a strip club. I stopped by a club to give the owner information about the Exotic Dancer, M.B.A., and just to say hi. After telling the owner that it was my birthday, he tried to buy me a beer, lunch or dinner! What a nice gesture! And proof to me that if you have the agenda of offering acceptance, it comes back to you ten-fold.

May it ever be.