'Charity suffereth long, and is kind,..." I Corinthians 13:4
I know people who walk into a sick person's house and take charge. I'm afraid if they did that to me they'd end up taking me to the hospital. My pride would not stand for someone taking charge of my home. I'd stew an acid brew and break out in fever blisters worrying about what they were doing and what they were thinking about me and my home. Yeah, I know. Pretty sad, isn't it?
I know people who have come to help me and have asked what they could do. That sets me at ease immediately. Their manner demonstrates a desire to truly help me, not to just perform an act of kindness or do what they think would be helpful.
Years ago, when I was first married, my mother gave me wise advice. When someone visits and offers to help, give them something to do. Often people ask to help, because they need to keep busy to feel comfortable. My mother taught me that giving them something to do with their hands can be an act of kindness. The point being that I focus on what makes the visitors comfortable, not what makes me comfortable. Sometimes that is very difficult to do.
Like every teenager, my eldest daughter struggled with friendships. Emotions run high and oversensitivity rules. Funny how that is also the age when kids become exceedingly cruel. I remember those days and the nasty things kids would said and do to others. I'll never forget how one girl in our school was treated. Ridicule is a kind word compared to how they treated her.
The best advice I could give my daughter is much the same as my mother gave me. When you feel yourself hurting, reach out and help someone else.
Let me take a moment and tell you right now that the world's (including some Christians) concept of love is all wrong. Love isn't about emotions and pleasant feelings. Affection isn't a synonym for love. Love, as you've probably heard before, is an action.
At the ripe old age of nineteen, I went on a missions trip to England. Before our team left we had a two week training course in New York. Boy, did I feel out of my element. Take a young prairie girl to a place where farms are smushed together such that this gal thought they were still in the city where trees blocked your vision all around you. How were you supposed to see your enemy approach?
Not only that, but I had been suffering with an illness I hadn't even begun to understand. It left me feeling dumb and weak, and kept me swelled up like a blowfish. My insecurities were riding high.
The last night together at training, one of my team members took me on a walk just to tell me that I wasn't the sort of person she would have as a friend, but because we were on the same team she'd try to be civil to me. Oy, talk about a blow. I look back now and laugh, but I wasn't laughing then. I'm thinkin' she wasn't lovin' me, and she didn't even know what love was.
Charity is kind. If that team member had understood that, she would have gone out of her way to help me overcome my insecurities instead of making them a reason to not consider me a person worthy of her friendship.
When one loves another, he is useful to that other person and will act in a manner that demonstrates a genuine desire to help the other. If he doesn't know how to help, he will ask and observe, and more than anything, he will pray for wisdom and the Holy Spirit's guidance. Then he will behave in a manner that benefits the other person.
I know I have a great affection for my children. I'd put myself in harm's way just to keep my children safe. But I must also choose to daily love them through behaving in a manner that benefits them. Sometimes that means listening or caring for their physical needs, and sometimes it means being open and honest with them, and even correcting them in order to help them change bad behavior. Helping them change so that they don't become an adult with bad behavior is a benefit with them. It is loving them, and it is being kind.
Unfortunately often a person does not see correction as being loving, no matter how gentle you are, but if you truly love you will do whatever it takes to benefit that person, including helping him see what he needs to change in his life. And then, being there for him when he takes those steps and needs encouragement to carry on. Love doesn’t stop at criticism. It doesn’t stop at advice. It continues with the person as he travels down the road to change, encouraging him along the way.
I've never been very good at accepting that kind of love. My knee-jerk reaction is that the person hates me. So I unintentionally test them, cruelly so at times, by getting angry. I've learned that people who do love me endure my little temper-tantrums and stick by me while I work my way to accepting the correction they gave me. Those that truly love me help me pick myself up off the ground, wipe myself off, and move forward.
Those people who stick with me through my wretched state of denial set an example for me that I want to follow in my life. I want to show true love to others. I want to be useful in a way that benefits those I claim to love and those God loves (which is everyone).
