Category: giving spirit (Page 2 of 3)

On Being Helpful

It’s my fault, really. I bought the children’s probiotics in the shapes of “fun animals.” Thus we need to pick through them every morning for matching giraffes. Every single child must do this. Rue the day that one of them doesn’t get to rifle through for their own vitamins.

Like today. Rue.

The oldest was trying to be helpful, dispersing the “fishies” (because the first time I purchased children’s probiotics, they were in the shape of fish. Now we’re eating jungle animals, but we still seem to have “fishies.”) but Miss M wanted to get her own. She refused the fishies in front of her. No! Never! I shall not! She insisted. 

During the pursuant intervention, I realized a few things about both the situation and the children.

  1. I set a precedent with a one-person-dispersing standard and the oldest was simply trying to follow the rules. He is a rule follower, like his mother, and in his mind, anyone bucking that system needs called out.  Resolved: Asinine rules for the sake of one person’s (read: MY) convenience clearly aren’t helpful.
  2. The oldest wanted to be helpful. That was his true heart. Allow me to do this for you, sweet sister. It is helpful for everyone if I just take control of this. 
  3. The sister didn’t want his help. This help, in fact, was a tad insulting. She was perfectly capable of getting her own damn vitamins, even the two-year-old can do that, thank you very much.

While his heart was pure, eldest child inadvertently sent a message to his junior: you cannot do this. You need my help. I am the capable, wise, giver-of-the-things. His helpfulness overruled her humanness. The helping became the priority, not the person whom he wanted to serve. In that moment, his actions, done in the name of help, actually hurt her sense of self and well-being.

I recently read The Active Life by Parker Palmer. Though not the premise of the book, he mentioned in passing how the best way we can help a person is to simply ask. Ask how we can help, if we can help. You preserve a certain sense of dignity  and worth of a person when you ask permission to serve.

So, this became the morning’s lesson: the oldest is to simply ask. May I get you your fishies this morning? Would that be helpful? This gives her the chance to respond and receive gracefully, or politely decline. To her, we began to instill that receiving help is not an indicator of your own worth or abilities, but sometimes someone’s good and pure heart. Some famous writer, (I’d like to attribute it to Brennan Manning, but he’s not alive to defend himself in case others disagree, so please add salt) wrote that if we cannot receive from our fellow man, how will we ever have the humility to receive from God? In our culture, it’s not common to see a graceful reception of unsolicited help. We hardly solicit it, even when it’s most needed.

All this thought on asking took me to God, as is my habit. God so rarely forces his help upon us. I believe he sees us each as capable human beings, letting us daily get our own fishies. Perhaps he would love to help us, if we were quiet enough to hear him ask, Can I do this for you?

Jesus said more than once, “you do not have because you do not ask.” I think this falls into the category of gracefully receiving help. Our willingness to let others do on our behalf. We’re such a bootstrappy culture, fixated on our own drive and self-preservation that often the idea of allowing others to intervene on our behalf provokes anxiety or even shame. We feel perceived as not good enough or capable.  The truth of the matter is, it doesn’t matter.

Whether we can or cannot, help is usually coming from a good heart. Yet that good heart must not force its goodness on others.

May we be willing to receive the gracious love of others as they try to be helpful. May we not perceive it as an indicator of our own worth or ability. And may we help lovingly, graciously, and honorably – by first asking instead of insisting.

Where’s Terri?

Terri saved me more than once already. We’ve been in our new/old town for just over a month, but the number of times I’ve left her office full of gratitude is greater than the number of times I’ve went to Walmart. (I think both Terri and I can all consider this an all-around success.)

The most recent occasion for my visit to Terri’s corner office was my upcoming mortgage payment. These new houses – well, they need paid for. Which required me knowing the amount of my monthly payment, along with finding a way to get money into and out of the checking account that would pay it. And if we could make all this happen in a way that repeated itself without so much effort, double word score. So I slumped into Terri’s office to admit I had indeed lost the passwords to make my online banking come alive AND I couldn’t find the payment books the bank had just sent. (Banking is hard. And so is moving.)

And then, she fixed it. Zim, zam, zoom, everything worked. I signed my name. She picked up the phone. Magically, all things banking-related worked again. How do real people do this? I wondered aloud.

How do real adults keep passwords and mortgages and school registrations and apply to see new doctors and salvage hearing aids left in the rain and read aloud to their children and potty train? And some of them – they even WORK. ALL YEAR ‘ROUND. How do they do this and not loose their ever-loving minds? 

It turns out that not just banking is hard. Or moving. Adulting, my friends, is terrible. Terrible! I’m not sure why this is a thing. Who decided we all needed to “become responsible” and “take care of ourselves” and “become productive members of society”? I’d like to talk to that person. I’d like to hire them to keep my calendar straight. And also, potty train the baby. This is going terribly as well.

Sometimes I look around and try to find the Terri’s of the rest of my life. Who around here is going to make this easier for me? People like Terri have spoiled me. Now I’m put off by people who aren’t trying to make my life easier. Like the woman at our former doctor’s office who wouldn’t let me email a form to the office but instead insisted I mail the hard copy with a stamp. (Add “buying stamps” to the list of hard things adults do. This task derails me every time.) And don’t tell me the office “doesn’t use email.” They do all their doctoring on ipads and laptops.

And where is The Terri at the school? If I suddenly go missing – after checking the laundry room – it would be best to look under the pile of 37 pink and green forms that the school requires. Per child. I could be buried alive. One person was so kind to point out that this is going to be my August activity for the next 14 years of my life. Times four. Can we please get a Terri in this office who will make things work electronically, so that all 62 people who need my cell phone number “in case of emergency” can simply pull it off the database?

I need a Terri everywhere. Someone who makes the day work just an eensy bit better. People who love their job, no matter what it is, enough – or so much – that it makes life better for others: these are my people. Like last week: I drove through Starbucks. The barista cheered for me when I made my selection. This. This needs to happen more. Cheers and helpfulness. Not forms and stamps.

Go, my friends. Be a Terri. Make some magic happen for someone. Make life a little better. Cheer, help and encourage.

(And just so you know that I practice what I preach, I just woke up my husband so HE could go be an adult. I didn’t even wake him with loud noises or a smack on the leg. We can do this, friends! We can be helpful to one another! And kind! It’s not as hard as we might think!)

The magic penny

I just needed one thing: coffee creamer. We even let the Kroger cashier check us out to be quicker. But the nice, chatty older woman behind me couldn’t let it be just that. 
The girls were waiting patiently, playing the touch-as-many-candy-bars-as-you-can-and-ask-what-each-of them-are-called game. Of course one asked for one, and I gave them my standard look that reminded them their chances were better if they wished for a fairy. 
The cat lady behind us would have none of it. (I’m not embellishing – her basket was filled with Fancy Feast.) “Oh, how sweet,” she said. “Can I buy them one?”
“Oh, no – that’s alright. They don’t need it. But thank you for the offer,” I politely responded. 
We get nearly all the way through with our useless Kroger Plus points and I tell the girls to each grab a bag. Cat Lady looks at me again. “My son and grandkids are out in California. I never get to treat them to things like this.” I gave some expression of sympathy that it stinks to live far from family and tried to move on. 
She gave me The Look. Head tilted forward, eyes looking up, and she poked a thumb toward the candy rack. “Please?” 
Alright girls, you scored big. 

Malvina Reynolds: Song Lyrics and Poems. Also, 4-H Camp. 
I told them that the generous woman behind us wanted them to each pick a piece of candy because she was so nice. They didn’t have to be told twice. Though the did have to look at each candy bar repeatedly to ensure they were making the best decision. We left, candy in hand. I’m praying they don’t start asking people behind us in line if they’ll buy them a candy bar. 
I really didn’t want to let Cat Lady treat them. Mostly because we just had a weekend of indulgent eating and, as mentioned, I don’t want them to think that strangers should just buy them something they want. (Is this an unrealistic fear?) But The Look trapped me – I couldn’t say no. I neither wanted to be the person who was so uptight about sugar for her kids nor wanted to steal joy from an old woman who just wanted to be nice.  So I caved. 

One of my major goals for my “Jesus Year” is to begin to live more generously. I’ve been struck recently by the generosity of others in my life, even if in seemingly small ways – a friend bought me a drink one evening, another one treated me to a cup of coffee.  Now a random stranger wanted to give my kids the small joy of a candy bar. 

To put it nicely, I would never do that. I would try. I would want to. I would intend to. But follow through? Psh. 
My friends, and especially Cat Lady, are teaching me what I’m missing with my fist-clenched lifestyle: the joy of giving. Watching 2 little girls as their eyes light up selecting the perfect chocolate (ahem, Butterfinger) and knowing I was a part of that. I helped make that happen. 
Perhaps I’m not generous because I’ve not practiced being generous. I don’t know that beautiful feeling, so I falsely believe that keeping my own to myself brings the utmost gratification. 
A friend of mine put on FB one time: Dear God: May I be generous to a fault. May I be so lavish in my generosity that people even consider me wasteful. Unreasonable. Imprudent. Because then, maybe they will get even a glimpse of how You have been toward me.
It caught me and stuck. Yes, that. What if I were to live as generously as God has been to me? What if I lived like I believed? I believe God to be generous, what if I lived like it were true? What would that look like? 
I’m challenged to stop looking only at the bottom line. (Sure, the bottom line counts somewhere, but it’s not the only question to be asked). Because I do believe in a God that transcends the Maths. He multiplies and divides and always has enough. 
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