THE TOUGHER SIDE OF LOVE

 

Boy 1: I’m gonna ask that girl out on a date.

Boy 2: You’d be wasting your time. You are ugly, overweight, and suffer severely from B.O. and that’s just your good points. Take it from me, she will reject you, maybe not straight away, perhaps, she will rinse your bank account first. But you have no future with that girl. I’m sorry mate, the writing is on the wall.

Boy 1: Harsh words, but priceless advice. I guess that’s what they call tough love.

Boy 2: It sure is.

Telling it like it is, tongue-in-cheek, that’s how the Urban dictionary illustrated “tough love.”

Author of the book “Tough Love,” Bill Milliken who worked in the “ghetto” with kids, described “tough love” through the expression:

“I don’t care how this makes you feel toward me. You may hate my guts, but I love you, and I’m doing this because I love you.”

He strongly emphasizes that a relationship of care and love is a prerequisite of “tough love.” “Tough love” example: genuinely concerned parents refusing to support their drug-addicted kid financially until he or she enters drug rehabilitation.

Many years ago, as members of the Couples for Christ community, we had a couple under our care who had an addicted son that became a source of family parental struggles. The father was yielding to his son’s addiction by giving him what the son wanted out of pity. On the other hand, the mother was putting out her pity and brushing aside his drug needs out of her love -- she called it “tough love.”

Amid the pandemic, “tough love” stories abound. Dr. Daniela J. Lamas, a pulmonary and critical-care physician narrated in the New York Times the story of a chronically ill child with a dismal prognosis and with parents unwilling to stop aggressive measures. To the bitter end, the child’s heart stopped. At the parents’ behest, the team moved forward with attempts at cardiopulmonary resuscitation. The efforts ended and the child didn’t make it. The parents entered the room, surveyed the detritus of the cardiac arrest, the lines, and the tubes, and surprised the medical team members by thanking them for doing everything they could. Even if it was futile from a medical perspective, the procedure let the family members know that the doctors had tried their best.

In most contexts, Dr. Lamas said it is a doctor’s responsibility, to tell the truth: particularly when nothing more could be done. However, truth is not enough. As Warren Wiersbe said, “Truth without love is brutality.” Truth must come with Love. Even a sort of love by way of resuscitation that will no longer benefit the patient, but may soothe the bereaved family, parting them with a conscientious narrative – “We did our best, baby” -- they could live with for the rest of their lives. What could be tougher than that kind of love?

“Love… rejoices with the truth… endures all things. (1 Corinthians 13:6-7)

The repair shop was as quiet as the grave when my wife and I took a peek at the whole area, enclosed by an interlink wire fence, but with an open gate. Being a Good Friday, the shop’s peace came to us as no surprise. Suddenly, catching a hissing sound in one corner, we spotted someone spray-painting a refrigerator – our fridge.

It was our first family fridge: GE brand, avocado green color, with engraved art door. We held it so dear that my wife and I, corporate breadwinners at that time, took advantage of the inactivity of the Holy Week by sending our fridge to the repair shop for new paint.

The sight of a solitary man working on a Good Friday repainting our fridge struck a sensitive nerve on both my wife and me – we felt conscience-stricken. We thought he must be at home, not only that it’s Good Friday, but also, like the rest of his co-workers, to have a good time with his own family.

Through and through that Holy Week, we make the most of the inactivity, by going to the mall to shop for a miscellany of hardware we needed, for other home improvement projects besides repainting our fridge. After shopping, we hailed a taxi cab to take home the three of us: my wife, our kid Leigh Roy, and I. After entering the cab, our kid got his one hand caught between the two metals when the door closed. First, we made out an odd, dull sound; second, we heard his long, loud, piercing cry. Right then and there, we knew a terrible thing had happened. My wife saw blood oozing out of his ugly wound.

We rushed to the nearest hospital, but we were crushed when we got there – no available doctors were around to attend to us because it was Holy Week. Just then, I remembered a doctor-friend who’s living nearby. We rushed to her house; thankfully, she was at home. She looked at the gaping wound. She told us one awful problem: she ran out of anesthesia. She gave us two options: a) she could treat the wound with no stitches; but, the infection risk would be high, the wound would take time to heal, and leave a visible unsightly scar; b) she could stitch the wound with no anesthesia; but, it would be very painful to the kid.

Tormented, my wife and I chose the second option. As our doctor-friend was stitching his wound, my wife and I were holding down both the struggling arms and feet of our kid, who was biting something in his mouth stuffed by our doctor-friend to prevent him from biting his tongue.

Turning a deaf ear to our wailing kid who was wetting his bed out of the excruciating pain he didn’t deserve – was impossible. Shrugging off his begging to stop such pain brought about by the needle piercing his skin – was too much to bear. But he needed the stitches to close the wounds.

The gut-wrenching incident calls to mind an open letter written by a parent to her kid:

“For as long as I live I will always be your parent first and your friend second. I will stalk you, flip out on you, lecture you, drive you insane, be your worst nightmare and hunt you down like a bloodhound when I have to because I love you. When you understand that, I will know you have become a responsible adult. You will never find anyone else in your life who loves, prays, cares, and worries about you more than I do. If you don’t mutter under your breath “I hate you” at least once, in your life, I am not doing my job properly.”

For my kid, Leigh Roy, we know full well, that was one moment in time, that had his mouth not stuffed with something to prevent him in biting his tongue, he surely could have blurted out the words “I hate both of you” spurred by such excruciating pain.

Delivered at home right after the Holy Week, our newly-painted fridge looked brand new in shiny apple green color. Sad to say, the fridge turned junky, in less than no time, due to needless movements that damaged its motor during the transport. We discarded it.

Just as our kid didn’t deserve the pain, so too, our fridge didn’t deserve its ruin. Both are His painful jabs for the Holy Week’s call: when you do anything else, always do it to honor Me. Tough Love? Well, when we’re good, He’s a lovey-dovey; but, when we’re bad, He’s a Tough Guy.