“Small Things with Great Love”

Get to know Brenda Delp: Client Coordinator and beloved team member of DVFBC.  Brenda comes to us from over 30 years of nursing and has brought a peaceful stability and understated humor to our team.

Would you like to write a blog, they ask? Oh no thank you, not me, I can hardly say it fast enough. I am a behind-the-scenes person, mostly an introvert, never eager to be in the spotlight. However, I left a long career in nursing to try something new, and here I am at DVFBC, learning new tasks and being exposed to new ideas in the (new to me) business world. I told myself that this change in season is an opportunity for growth and fresh challenges. So, to this end, I begin an internal conversation: what would I even write about in a blog? What would I want to say?

So, perhaps if I were going to write a blog, I would be thinking about how our culture right now demands that we must speak up, that our voice counts, that it is no longer okay to quietly hang out in the comfortable background (me). I would say that I could learn to use my voice more often. I would admit that I am someone who would rather read and ponder than speak out in a group, and that my comfort zone is in attending to background details rather than standing up front. I would tell you that I am more of a do-er than a talker, and I would smile thinking of one of my favorite quotes, “Do small things with great love” (Mother Teresa). Small things, with great love, to me that is a life-giving motto that “sparks joy” in me (Marie Kondo).

I would likely reflect that as a nurse I have had the privilege of caring for many people, walking beside them through both joyful and difficult journeys. I have marveled at the wonder of creation while caring for shiny newborns. I have steadied the hands of dying hospice patients and comforted their families. I have learned from both patients and their families that the small, tender gestures do matter, that people can tell if care is genuine, that everyone needs an advocate. I learned that while we don’t often have all the answers we so desperately seek, we may be able, together, to figure out just the next step. I would tell you that I find myself humbled everyday by people’s experiences and resilience. I would most definitely say that my heart is filled daily with gratitude and most days with hope.

I might contemplate that in her book Emotional Agility, Susan David seeks to help us become more aware of our emotions, learn to accept them, and then to flourish by increasing our emotional agility. She suggests the way we reach this agility is by taking tiny steps in everyday moments over the course of a lifetime (p 237). Hmm, tiny steps, I can take those! I might also reflect that in another book I recently read, The Soul of Money, author Lynne Twist talks about the gift of enough, that we are enough, and we have enough. She encourages a life-altering shift in mindset- from scarcity to sufficiency, complaint to commitment, and envy to gratitude (p.243). So, I find myself striving to take tiny steps everyday toward greater emotional agility, reminding myself that I am enough, and intentionally filling myself from head to soul with deep gratitude.

It might, then,  be fitting for me to wrap it up by mentioning that lately I find myself reflecting on Robert Fulghum’s writing, “All I really needed to know I learned in Kindergarten.” Back to the basics. Be nice. Share. Say you are sorry. Treat others with respect. Hold hands and stick together. Common sense, everyday things that we can all choose to do. So true, isn’t it? Yet in a time of such great division and uncertainty, these foundational ideas get lost in the fray. I might then, end by sharing a gentle reminder that even though there are many things, and big things, out of our control, conversely there are small everyday choices within our grasp. I hope that my choices reflect patience, kindness and encouragement. I would wonder what your thoughts are on these things, and I would urge you to hold hands and stick together, but not literally, please, until the pandemic is over.