Monday, July 9, 2007

Willing to Receive

Yesterday, before I slayed the beast, I had an interesting experience. I tried to take lunch to a family whose son was in the hospital here. I made several phone calls to the hospital before I was put through to the family. Then, when I asked if I could bring them lunch, they said that they would just eat in the cafeteria at the hospital.

I was taken aback. I had really wanted to be able to love on this family whose son normally gets medical treatment in Minnesota. I kept racking my brain to figure out how I could have changed my approach so that they would have accepted my offer to help. I ultimately decided that I just needed to show them some grace and understand that they are going through a difficult time.

Later in the evening, the friend who had introduced me to the above family said that she had seen them and that they had apologized to her for not accepting my offer. They didn’t know why they had so quickly refused an offer of help.

When it comes down to it, though, it’s just human nature.

How many times have I done the same thing? How many times has someone offered to help me, and I’ve rejected the offer of help so that I could do things on my own? I’m sure that I couldn’t even remember or count all those rejections that I have handed out.

Ultimately, we all want to do life on our own. We want to be independent. Yet, most people have an innate desire to help others. And so this creates an interesting juxtaposition: How can people ever give of their time and talents if everyone wants to live independently? Obviously we can’t. At some point, we need to be vulnerable and accept the offers of help from others and be willing to receive help from God as well.

“Lord, please continue to show me opportunities to help others, and help me identify those areas in my life in which I am trying to do things apart from You. I do not want to lead a life that looks like a “do-it-herself” job, which does not glorify You.”

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

It's ironic that you posted this today. I've been working on a post about community... about how I desperately need it... about how we desperately need it. Thanks for sharing.
~www.bjhamrick.com

spaghettipie said...

I am always so ready to "offer my help" and yet so reluctant to accept it (or even worse, ask for it!). Great reminder.

BJ - funny that the thoughts on community are going around the blogosphere. I've been thinking and writing on it a lot too!

Alyssa said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Alyssa said...

BJ - You are welcome! I have been thinking about fears lately and loved your post requesting that your readers comment on the fears they face.

SP - This was one of those events that took me by surprise, and so I had to write about it to process it. It was during through the processing that I saw the community aspect of it. Sometimes it takes me a little while to get away from the "me" aspect, as gross as that sounds.

Alyssa said...

Note to any concerned readers about the "comment deleted": It was my own comment that I deleted. I had responded to BJ's comment and didn't find out until after I posted that comment that I had a comment from SP as well. So, I deleted my first comment to respond to both in one fell swoop. I didn't know it would put such a foreboding announcement in its place. I'm still learning this thing called blogging!