I was leaving church on Sunday, and a previous patient walked up to me letting me know that she was going to make an appointment with our office. I smiled and said that we are always glad to help, and asked her what was going on.

She stated that she can’t hear and she is getting tired of it. She looked at the newspaper and there was a page full of ads offering ‘to-good-to-be-true’ deals. She asked why we didn’t do ads. I pointed out first to her that there are markets where ads are very useful and helpful, then I explained to her that we don’t do them here because it isn’t our job to sell hearing aids the way they advertise. We evaluate, and we test, and finally we educate with the best options. That is our job. If we do that well, then in the end it’s going to be everyone’s decision about buying a hearing aid. She smiled while waving her fist in the air, “That’s good because I don’t trust those ads.”

It made me question where that trust disappears to sometimes. Lack of trust can happen when one loses control of a situation, or is required to confront something new and unfamiliar. Control and the familiar are like warm blankets that surround us, and they make us feel that the world is safe. When that sense is lost, we begin to question with suspicion as a way to fight back, and hold onto what is important to us. Our trust, or lack of trust can sometimes be the only control that we have left.

When a person in front of us has lost that control, I believe that we are called to be leaders. In that leadership one finds a way to empower the person in front of them. When one loses control, the possibilities can be murky, if not invisible. That leader should be a light to those possibilities no matter how small. The solution will not make it the same as it was before, but it can be solid ground in which to heal and start anew.

In that relationship, the possible becomes the warm blanket. Empowerment becomes the warm blanket. In the possible, one’s control is rooted in the way things can be, and not just the in way things were. A warm blanket is the best thing to give someone who feels they have been left out in the cold, and needs something to trust.