So I have a confession to make.  I live about 45 minutes from all the devastating flooding that has occurred in Louisiana and I have had no desire to help.  I wish I could make that sound better than it is.  Or at least have a good excuse for my feelings of apathy in all this.  I have felt really bad about this.  As I scan facebook and see all the other people out there who are doing good to help our neighbors, I have to question myself and ask why I am not motivated to be part of the relief for these people.

I consider myself to be a strong Christian woman.  I love God.  I want to be like Him.  I am humbled by His grace and mercy in my life.  But in times like these I see that He still has a lot of work to do with me still.  I want to want to serve people.  I want to care for my neighbor as God tells me to do.

My lack of desires comes down to this:  helping people is highly inconvenient and it involves a commitment of time that I don’t want to give up.  It’s not that I don’t have the time.  It’s just the age old struggle against my selfish self who wants to do what I want to do when I want to do it.  And there never seems to be a good day to give up a morning or afternoon to go help someone else.

I made the decision to go help today.  My biggest motivation for going was that I wanted my kids (ages 7 and 8) to experience what it looks like for a community to lose everything.  I want them to see the faces of people who are in crisis in the hopes that it will build in them a spirit of compassion and service.  I want them to see that when they lend a hand, they can make a difference for people who are suffering.  But I also went for me.  Because I knew that my spirit was in need too.

When I first told the kids that we were going to help those affected by the flood, my 8-year old daughter said that it sounded scary.  My 7-year old son was not interested in going at all and immediately expressed that he would not be helping anyone.  Yes, helping others can be scary.  And I understand very well my son’s resistance to help.  Still, because they don’t have a vote in these things, we piled in the van this morning and drove over to a church in the flooded area to help in their distribution center.  My children were the only younger kids helping which I think was a good thing since being surrounded by hard-working adults, there was less temptation to sit around or just play.  My daughter got into helping right away.  She was practically running between a truck full of supplies and the church, bringing in all sorts of cleaning supplies, fans, baby items, etc. to be given away.  She was having fun and enjoying the compliments of many of the adults around her who were praising her hard work.  My son, true to his word, resisted helping at first.  It took about 20 minutes for his resistance to wear down before he joined in.  But then he was off and running, full of energy, enjoying the praises of the adults and helping with the work.  He had found his superman costume in the van on our ride to the church and had slipped it on over his clothes so his cape was flying behind him as he made his way from the unloading truck to the church and again as he raced around inside, finding the right place to put the supplies.

When they were busy, the kids had fun.  But there were times when there wasn’t a task that needed to be done at the moment and we had to just sit and wait until we were told what to do next.  The kids struggled during those times and the adults did as well.  We came to work and we wanted to do something!  But as I told the kids, helping isn’t always fun and it isn’t always entertaining.  It’s not always exciting.  Sometimes when we are helping we have to sit and be patient.

The game changer for me came when I was asked to escort a woman around the facility to pick out the supplies that she needed.  As I started to push the cart towards the mountain of organized donations, she hesitated.  She looked around at the mounds of cleaning supplies, clearly overwhelmed and started to cry.  “I don’t even know what I need” she said, “I lost everything in the flood”.  I looked in her eyes, glistening with tears.  I saw her pain and I saw her fear.  I saw a person whose world had been changed forever, struggling to begin the overwhelming process of starting over.

That face to face interaction, the sharing of sorrow, is what changed things for me.  I met a lady who lost everything and she cried about it.  That’s it.  But I feel differently about helping now.  Now, I want to go back and help again.

To those of you who are struggling with motivation to help out the flood victims: I understand.  I get it.  I don’t have anything magical to say to you to convince you to go.  I can just share my story and hope that it encourages someone else to go and look into the eyes of someone who knows what it means to lose everything.  You will be changed for the better.