I'm reading 90 Minutes in Heaven, by Don Piper. I've wanted to pick it up for a while, and our recent trip to Texas provided the perfect environment for quiet uninterrupted reading time. I'm only halfway through but there was one scene that really stood out.
To set the stage: a Baptist Minister is en route home and his small car is literally run over by a big truck, crushing him inside with such life-threatening injuries he is pronounced dead at the scene. The emergency crews toss a tarp over the car with this man inside and attend to the other accident victims after checking at least twice that there is no pulse. A full hour and a half later, the emergency crews are frantically using The Jaws of Life to extract him because another minister who happened upon the scene was praying over his body and heard him singing along to the hymn.
True story. It is graphic and uplifting, difficult even to read what he went through, the miracle of each step in his recovery and his intense pain during those months and years. There were moments where my mind turned to the suffering of Christ and wondered how a human body and spirit could endure it.
The Minister came to see God's profound lessons during his convalescence, and one very meaningful passage leapt out at me. It involved his Mentor and friend visiting and observing the Minister, who is struggling with intense depression and pain, turn away well-wishers and offers to help in some small way.
The exchange that followed has changed the way I interpret relationships. After the visitors had gone, the Mentor admonished the Minister. 'You need to get your act together,' he told him: 'You're not treating them right. You won't let them do anything for you.'
You can imagine how the Minister protested to those words. He was the one in constant pain, and doing all the hard work. It was his body with steel rods running in and out of his arms and legs, and tubes everywhichway, with no end in sight for his recovery. He was the pathetic and woeful one. It was his life. It was his desire for people to leave him alone in his misery.
But the Mentor persisted. 'It's not your call. You have spent the better part of your life trying to minister to other people ... and now you are cheating them out of an opportunity to express their love for you.'
It was a shocking passage. It meant that when we connect with others, even superficially, we give a part of ourselves away. We give them the reins. Our friends and family become vested in us and the glue is love and purpose.
This lesson isn't just for when we are lying helplessly in a bed and have no alternative: it should be applied during every step of living. We gave permission for the people we love to participate even when we don't need it because we invited them in.
I started looking at all the things that are taken for granted, the small gestures of someone making you breakfast or your son mowing the lawn, or your friend taking you out for lunch and offering to pay. Being more in tune with a graciousness of heart and a graciousness of spirit. Maybe, too, recognizing the gifts for what they are: an expression of love and a desire to please.
I looked back and see it in the failed relationships in my life. Not just in some of them: in all of them. As the relationship grew sick, there were less opportunities to make kind gestures and participate. And when you can no longer give, our role becomes uncertain, we felt unnecessary, and inevitably the relationship ends.
I know we pride ourselves on independence and stalwartness but I wonder about this side of it. So today I think I'll call a friend and see if I can't somehow work the conversation around to this passage and hint around at how her isolated, self reliance is affecting those who want to help. And today I'm going to call someone I've not honestly let in my life the way I should have and see what happens when I nudge open the door.
Post Script: both went well.
No comments:
Post a Comment