Lessons Learned From Oversharing With a Stranger

I had an encounter last week that I can't get out of my head. I was Black Friday shopping with my sister-in-law and mother. My sister-in-law has 7 children, and I have 2. Black Friday became the day we could spend together without any children, which is a tiny miracle. It's our day to shop, laugh, talk, and brag about our savings at Kohl's.

I was the first to finish shopping in a mall, so I took a seat on a bench to wait for the other girls. An elderly man soon joined me on the bench. He made small talk back and forth. Eventually, he asked me about my family.

"I have a boy and a girl. My daughter has a disability."

The man responded, "That's too bad. What does she have?"

"She has Down syndrome. My husband is home with her today while I get a break."

"Well, there's worse things to have," the man replied.

I continued, "Well, she has other problems too. She has heart and lung issues, and she's in the hospital a lot."

The man said, "That will happen with that sometimes."

"It's a bit more complicated than that," I replied.

Then the elderly man's friends started up a conversation with him, I went back to playing Candy Crush, and that's how the conversation abruptly ended.

I replayed the conversation over and over wishing it would have gone differently. What was I doing? Why was I trying to tell this guy about how bad off my daughter was?

My second thoughts were in frustration that I couldn't make him understand. I feel like when people hear a word like "cancer" or "cystic fibrosis" people tend to understand that these are more serious, life-threatening diagnoses.

When people hear my child has Down syndrome, they tend to think that it's only developmental in nature. For most people, it is. For my child, it goes way beyond Down syndrome. Jaycee has a very unique set of health problems of asthma, obstructive sleep apnea, recurrent pneumonia, frequent atelectasis, lung cyst, AV canal heart defect, GERD, strabismus, and Wolff-Parkinson White syndrome. I feel like when people see or hear about Jaycee, they aren't aware of the fact of how many times her life has been in jeopardy.

But why was I trying to convince a stranger of this?

I prayed. I talk to God about what happened that day. What was the point of that encounter? And what was I suppose to learn from this?

During worship in church a few days later, I got my answer. My mistake wasn't that I was trying to overshare information with a stranger. After all, it's hard to hide that part of my life that is so consuming. My mistake was how I tried to present it. Rather than trying to convince him that my daughter was worse off than he realized. I should have shared her problems in the context of a testimony and not as a 'woe is me' story.

It should have gone like this:

"I have a boy and a girl. My daughter has a disability."

The man responded, "That's too bad. What does she have?"

"She has Down syndrome and requires daily medical interventions for other problems. My husband is home with her today while I get a break."

"Well, there's worse things to have," the man replied.

I continued, "Well, she is our miracle child. She's been in the hospital over 20 times with a few scary stays in the ICU. God has watched over our little girl."

Maybe next time, I talk to a stranger, I will keep this in mind.