to care

“I’m not afraid to make big mistakes. To fall flat on my face. I need to get this looked at, need to get this looked at. I need some time to think about what I’ve done…”

- The Almost


In earnest, I am the exact opposite of the song lyrics say above. I hate to make mistakes, and I am quite afraid of falling on my face. I do not like to look bad in any situation. In fact, when I am alone (most often when I am trying to fall asleep) I go through all the “stupid” things I may have said or done that day in my mind. In most cases I imagine other people haven’t even noticed or perceived what I said or did in the way I felt it was taken. Although most of the time, it is hard to convince myself of that.

Yet, I am learning to admit more freely where I actually do lack. I wouldn’t say that I am a humble person, but I hope that one day once God has worked on me more, that I will possess the quality of humility. In saying all of that, I would like to impart a lesson that I’ve learned and honesty about my own character.

I have been working for a little over two years now as a care giver for a very special woman. It is an interesting situation for me, as she is both my Mother’s best friend and my Godmother. I first met her when I was about six or seven years old. Since then she has been an integral part of my family and a deeply important model of faith for me. We share a unique friendship that goes beyond the employer and employee relationship. And I thank God for allowing me the privilege of serving her in the ways He has led me to.

Despite all of that, there are many days when I have just not felt like going to work. I’m tired or grumpy or restless. I don’t feel like doing laundry or dishes, or being cooped up in a house all day. I would rather be in bed or go out somewhere to do something fun. When I first started feeling this way I would just rush through work, willing the clock to move faster so I could leave. Lately though I have felt a nudge to submit those feelings to God, asking Him to teach me through them. I don’t want to take my moods out on other people. I don’t want to rush or not do something properly because I don’t feel like it. I don’t want to be a hindrance instead of a help to my Godmother. And I don’t want my way of “caring” to continue to be so shallow and fickle.

One of the many essential things that I have learned while working as a care giver has been what is genuine caring, and what is a selfish façade of caring. My Godmother has told me stories of people who would come to visit her in order to minister to her or show her some kindness. Yet what they really ended up doing was demanding that she get out of bed when she was sick, to sit with them so she could be talked at and ridiculed for not being able to be a good hostess or for the problems she faced in her life, including her inability to fix them despite her crippling illness. And many times if they wanted to do something specific to “help” her, it would end up being something that just made her situation worse.

From her conveyed experiences and the ways that I feel God has been teaching me, I can deduce one of the biggest reasons why people who want to help end up hurting instead. I have even done this myself. When approaching a person who needs help, we have come to the situation with our ideas of what they need, our assumptions of what will fix their problems. So we act on them, instead of stopping to ask and listen to what the person might say they actually need. We set out to do one task that could be the complete opposite of what would help, because it’s what we’re comfortable with or because it might be something we would want someone else to do for us. In some situations, what we do is done just so that we can pat ourselves on the back. We quickly perform our moral duty to help someone less fortunate than us and then go on our way.

It takes more sacrifice than that to really help. It takes the willingness to listen and put aside what we feel like doing. If we want to learn how to care in a real way, to serve a person in the way Jesus would have us serve, we need to give more time. And actually, once that time is given, I have found it is actually a lot easier to care and give help because God is helping me do it. I have learned and continue to learn that my way of caring is quite superficial. That even my deepest times of care are so insignificant compared to how all encompassing and compassionate God’s care is. It actually disturbs me to think about the level of care I previously considered to be enough.

Now that I’ve had a bit of a heart lesson, even though I still have those feelings of not wanting to go to work and help, I have begun asking God to mold me and change the way I care to align more with His. It’s quite simple to learn how to help, actually. Listening is a crucial part of helping. And once we listen, we will most likely be given all kinds of ways that would help a person, whether small or big. It’s just about learning to turn the focus from ourselves to others. It's about whether or not we really want to learn to care.