LIFE WITH A CAPITAL 'L' Chapter FIVE, sec. TWO

LOANING – section TWO “WHY NOT?”

 First, we are frequently convinced that people need to “deserve” our assistance.

“Will you help me with this?”

“Why should I?” comes a response which implies the need of a good reason. “Should”implies a conditional situation. If a person deserves my presence, if I support their efforts, if I get something out of it . . . thenI reward them.

Quite to the contrary, a person loans because that is what goodness does. It is the nature of kindness; it is the offspring of largesse and maturity.

“Why should I?”  The answer is not because a person’s cause or purpose earns my aid but because something inside me responds to need. Because noble attitudes lend without owning, because we follow the formula for healthy relationships found in the twelfth chapter of the Epistle to Romans, “in honor [give] preference to one another; not lagging in diligence” (vv.10-11).

Why does a cat purr? Sorry, but not because of circumstance. It is a cat’s nature to purr. Circumstance can encourage purring, but circumstance does not a purr create. Hopefully, those occasions when we truly “should not” loan ourselves to another emerge from wise deliberation or for appropriate reasons rather than from our own disappointed or unmet expectations.

I am now old enough to start reading about hormone replacement therapy and to love solitude. In my late twenties and early thirties, my life was public, my time away from family filled with encouraging faith in others. I loved scripture, I loved the lord, I was deeply involved in teaching Bible. No one could have been more surprised than I then when a conflict slumbering in a distant corner of my soul came begging attention. 

When I was a child, nearly every person I knew well was a declaring Christian. Everyone that is but my much-adored father. I was a spiritually sensitive child and in light of my training, I worried about his eternal fate. My heart panicked in the night with thoughts that my daddy could die and go to hell. And panic finally moved me one night to the side of his bed where I woke him and begged him to tell me if he was saved.

“I’m a Christian, Punkie, but not like you are,” he said. Returning to my room, I tried to figure. With little notice, as I grew, so also grew a discomfort with much of what I received doctrinally, with unbecoming but familiar practices among my fellow Christians, and the paradox of my “outsider” father’s unchurched but clearly admirable—can I say Christ-like—life.

Now, as an adult and uninvited, that child’s crisis festered. It prompted a refitting of my faith. It was as if childhood training needed cutting away like the shirt of a shooting victim. A mind needed healing. A properly sized adult faith needed tailoring. It took three years. I wrote a poem during that crisis, at the point of feeing weak and spiritually naked. It sprang from Psalm 34:18.

Have you ever been a Christian

When you weren’t in love with God?

When phrases “Praise the Lord” and

“Thank you, Jesus”

Grate like sand well hid in lettuce?

Have you ever felt

That smiling members of the body—

Whose lamps are lit, not hid under meal-tubs—

Gather as a Sunday flame

Coruscating inner crannies

Where stands your well-cloaked darkness?

A few, just a few

See your lamp’s not lit

Shade their own

To spare your tired eyes

And quietly lend oil.

A few lend oil. Many cannot in this sort of situation. Failing faith frightens many saints. But a few lend oil. Not because they “should,” not because I earned it, not because they are guaranteed success. One such friend is Chris. The poem honors her. She is radically Christian. She loves God and His people but neither, unrealistically. Chris saw my lamp was not lit. She knew I could barely tolerate bright, beaming Christians. She quietly loaned herself and allowed her faith to carry me along for as long as it would take me to walk again in my own.

Shortly after that painful season I attended a writer’s workshop. The poem you just read was critiqued by a published poet serving on the faculty. Several of us sat with him around a table while he read our work. A few pieces of mine had earned his approval, so I felt unthreatened as he picked up this piece. He began to read then stopped, put it down and said, “Who wrote this?” I gathered from his tone to expect no admiration.

“I did,” I admitted.

“Rewrite it,” he ordered. “You can’t be a Christian and not love God.”

“No?” I thought, then I said, “I ama Christian and I guarantee you when I wrote that poem I was not in love with God.”

No wonder so many spiritual struggles are private, quiet struggles. Mine was. A few friends knew. A few lent oil, lent themselves. That is all it takes. Encouragement, wisdom, presence, listening—yes. Shoulds and should nots, demands or expectations—no. Just a deliberate giving of unearned shoulders and support.

Second, loaning can be deterred by a fear of losing control.

True, when we loan ourselves, a certain amount of circumstantial control is lost. When we contribute to the needs of others, we do things, go places, taste foods, read books, hear conversations, clean houses, repair fences, cry, laugh, stay out, drop in, calm down, and shut up—for their sake. We hear in order to listen, we may very well influence but we do not loan ourselves demanding that. We do lose a certain amount of control when we loan ourselves.

My mother replaced a good couch with a better one. Neither my brother nor I needed the first one but we knew a young woman who manages to squeeze from little income a remarkable existence for herself and her children. 

“She might like to have it,” I suggested.

A few phone calls later I asked Mom about it. “Well, I’d like to give it to her,” she said, “but you know her kids are going to jump on it and ruin it.”

I laughed and laughed. “Good, Mom. Give it to Salvation Army. You’ll have a lot more control over how it is treated, right?”

So people jump on things we give. Imagine the joy giving brings in the meantime. How often do we get the opportunity to drop a heavy expanse of happiness into someone’s living room, literally? Mom was having a hard time loaning out of abundance because she worried about how her gift would be treated. She is a fine woman. I think it will not take long for her to overcome her need to control.

Have you ever tried to give something to someone without actually letting go of it? Ever experience those embarrassing seconds in an exchange when no one is sure who should release or grasp first? Gotta let go to let go. Advising doesn’t, teaching doesn’t, tutoring doesn’t, even assisting doesn’t always but loaning means letting go.

Third, we hesitate loaning ourselves to others because we fear it somehow diminishes our freedom. That, it does. How very perceptive of us. Perhaps nothing demonstrates more clearly why commitment rather than surrender must govern the dailyness of our lives. So many things to do, so many people to do things with, or for. Either we are deliberate about our time and activities or we succumb to a circuit of demands like a roller coaster rider released at the highest point of the track. Forget steering—all you do is hold on and hope the car does. You may feel free, what with all that frantic busyness blowing your hair straight out, but you are not free. You are going where forces whip you. Loaning does diminish freedom but only to the extent we allow. It also diminishes frenzy, self-centeredness, anger, pettiness, frustration, and regret.

In the fall of 1991, at Yosemite National Park, Mark Wellman and Mike Corbett scaled Half Dome. For two weeks they inched their way along the mountain’s sheer cliff as spectators watched from some 2,000 feet below. A newspaper article I read about this particular climb said there was great concern for the physical well-being of Mike Corbett, “Yosemite’s most experienced rock climber.” He suffered numbness in his arms.

“With Corbett leading, they had to inch up the final 75 feet of 2,200-foot Half Dome’s vertical face to reach the summit. Part of the climb required them to swing out on their rope eight to ten feet from the wall to get above an overhang.”

That might not seem like much to experienced climbers, but now the rest of the story. Mark Wellman is a paraplegic. This climbing enthusiast requires help. Enter Mike Corbett. Enter loaning. Corbett’s job was double. No wonder his arms grew tired, got numb. Basically, he climbed the mountain twice. First, he climbed and set pitons, then after Mark pulled himself up, hand over hand, Mike returned to the original position to clean up the equipment. He then climbed past Mark, set the next increment, moved back down, removed equipment, climbed . . . 

Exhausted, in danger of dehydration, impeded by the mountain for days longer than expected, these two made history. With the loan of the best climber around, Mark Wellman made the first major rock climb by a paraplegic. Did Mike Corbett give up some freedom? He did. For nearly two weeks he climbed at another man’s pace, in another man’s style. He did twice the work. He exhausted himself. He deliberately gave up freedom; he voluntarily knocked himself out. 

“Why should I?” was answered by noble character. True, you betcha, loaning diminishes personal freedom. But, oh, what a beautiful cutback.

Coming us: Section Three: What Could be Worse?

      I was terrified of flying. Put a capital T on Terrified . . .