For a variety of reasons, this old joke has been on my mind:
So
there's this huge flood one day, and an entire town looks like it's going to be
swallowed up by the waters. And the Police and Rescue Agencies are all over the
place trying to get people to safety.
So
they send the rescue boat over to this house where a guy is sitting on the roof
with the water lapping around his ankles, and they say "Come on, quickly,
there isn't much time!"
To
which he replies, "Nah, I'm good, God will provide."
So
about an hour later they're zooming past in the boat and notice the guy is
still there, only the water is up to his waist, almost at the top of the roof.
"Quick," they say, “get in the boat; it's going to get worse before
it gets better.”
"Nah,
don't worry - God will provide"
An
hour after that a rescue helicopter flies over the area and notices the guy,
who is standing on the peak of the roof, with only his head and shoulders out
of the water. "GRAB THE ROPE!" they cry "IT'S YOUR ONLY
HOPE!"
"Don't
worry" he replies calmly. "God will provide."
He
drowns. After he goes to heaven, he is a little ticked off with God. "I
had FAITH, I BELIEVED in you - and still you didn't help me"
"HELP
YOU?!" God replies "What MORE did you want - I sent you two boats and
a helicopter.”
I've wished for help, asked for help, rejected help and
prayed for help at many points in my life. It’s only when I was open to the
possibility that help might appear in an unexpected form, that it transformed my life. And throughout my life I’ve tried to listen and
understand when I was being asked for
help. I know I got it wrong, more than once, and imposed my version of “help”
when it wasn't really helpful. I'm truly sorry for that. No one ever thinks they're doing “it” wrong. If we had that level of constant self-awareness, then
history would never repeat itself and our children would all be “perfect”.
As a result, asking for help, giving help and receiving help
are often full of angst. I’m not talking about “help carrying in the groceries”;
I’m talking about the kind of help that potentially moves you from the mess of Point A to the improvement in Point B.
I remember the time I fell apart, in a big way, and found
myself on mood altering, anti-anxiety meds. I needed to pull myself together
for a formal event. I sat at the kitchen table, struggling to take deep breaths,
praying for help. The doorbell rang. There stood one of our very best friends
with a bouquet of flowers, telling me I was thought of, cared for and loved. In
that moment the cloud lifted and I successfully managed the rest of the day,
and the event.
Sometimes the call for help, while inconvenient, is obvious.
Dan and I were enjoying a “date night” when he got a call from his sister. Her
husband wasn’t home and the elderly neighbor had called about a strange noise in
her kitchen. Dan reluctantly got in the car for the 20-minute drive, introduced
himself to the neighbor and went in to investigate. The refrigerator was banging
away, and when he opened the door the brine in the pickle jar was boiling. Had
he not answered that call for help she might have been seriously injured or
died in a house fire.
Then there are those moments when we really need help, but
we are so defensive and so embedded in the righteousness of our personal beliefs,
or our past decisions, that we are not open to the possibility that the current
situation could be altered for the better. On Sunday morning, after a gym
workout, Dan and I drove past a car with a flat tire. Dan immediately said, “Do
they need help”? He circled back and pulled up behind them. Dan asked the young
man driving the car if he had a spare and got an angry negative response. He
asked again, “Are you sure?” The driver then got out and took a look.
Underneath a mountain of groceries he found a spare that had never been used. Dan
pulled it out and found the jack. Dan proceeded to change the tire. I stood out
in the road a bit, acting as a traffic cone in my bright pink workout shirt.
Fifteen minutes later, all fixed. As we drove away we could only assume that
this young man had never changed a tire and just wanted to save face. That fact
that he also had two passengers, one of them a baby, may have contributed to
his willingness to accept help from two older folks in sweaty gym wear.
I’m neck deep in a family situation where “help” is totally
at issue. The conversation has devolved from “Every day is Ground Hog day for
me”; to “I don’t know where to get help”; to “that won’t help” and now “I don’t
need your help.” The event that precipitated this felt like a crisis to those
of us trying to help. On the recipient end it would appear that years of poor prior
life decisions have created a Mount Everest of reasons to reject help and, as a
result, has redefined the crisis as a non-event. There is angst on every side. It
spills over on to everyone involved, to the point that, this morning, waking up
tense and angry, I rejected a sincere offer of help to get my gym, computer and
other bags out to my car.
It’s true that the only person, who can change you, is you.
The closer our relationship to someone, the more we want the power to say those
magic words that will allow him or her to say “Yes! That’s the solution I’ve
been looking for! Thank you for helping me! I’ll admit—I didn’t know I had a
spare!”
But when the solution to someone else’s problem appears to
be so clear—to you—and then to be blasted for trying to help can feel like a knife to
the heart. For me, I know that help
can come from unexpected places and take unexpected forms. And I also know that
calls for help can come from unexpected sources and have unexpected solutions.
And when love and relationships are involved, the angst is unavoidable.
Music that resonates:
Help - The Beatles
