Notes from the Wayside: Introspection: God Help Me, I Can't Help You!

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God Help Me, I Can't Help You!

So I find that, as a rule, when I want to do what is good, evil is right there with me. I gladly agree with the Law on the inside, but I see a different law at work in my body. It wages a war against the law of my mind and takes me prisoner with the law of sin that is in my body. I'm a miserable human being. Who will deliver me from this dead corpse?

Romans 7:21-24 (CEB)

And how far will I let you slip

In this bottomless pit?

I cannot rest my thoughts on you

So I'll leave you this way

Forever and anon torn

I've lost my passion and my soul

Still rain pours from the darkened sky

From "Empathy" by Mortal Love

On one Saturday morning a few months ago, I was walking to a coffee shop downtown when a man approached me, apparently mistaking me for someone he knew from his church. Seeing that I was not the person he thought I was, he went on strike up a conversation with me. He asked me where I attend church, so I told him. He then told me that his daughter was being bullied at school and asked me to pray for her with him. He prayed, and then I prayed.

After I said Amen, the man noted that I used the word bless a lot in my prayer. (I sometimes ask God to bless people without asking for anything specific for them because I realize that God knows what people need better than I.) The man then told me that I could be a blessing to him. He told me that he was going through a difficult time financially and that his employer was not helping him whatsoever. He told me that he was recently visited by someone from the department of social services who told him that if his kitchen wasn't fully stocked within the next few days, they would take his children from him. He then asked me to give him some money for groceries.

A request for prayer had segued into a request for money. I started to wonder if the man really had a daughter who was being bullied at school.

I informed the man that I didn't have any cash with me - which was true - but he just smiled and told me that he could show me to an ATM. This man was persistent: he was not going to let me go on my way until he got what he wanted from me. He said that he wouldn't blame me if I didn't give him any money, but he would wonder why a brother in Christ would not help him. This man really knew what he was doing. He had taken the time to find out that I was a Christian and then used the fact to emotionally blackmail me. He knew what strings to pull.

I was faced with a decision between being heartless and being stupid. Suddenly, I saw a third way, and I flipped the script on the man. I remembered that there was a grocery store just a few blocks away, so I offered to go to the store with him and to pay for his groceries. That was, after all, what he said he needed. He was reluctant to go to the store with me at first, but I kept urging him to go with me.

As we walked toward the grocery store, the man suddenly seemed less interested in my help and more eager to get away from me. He started making excuses regarding why he couldn't go to the store with me. He said that he needed to get back to his children and suggested that I go ahead and buy the groceries for him and then meet up with him later, but I refused to go to the store without him. Then he suggested that I wait for him while he went to pick up his children so that we could all go to the store together. I told him that I didn't have time to wait for him, and we parted ways.

I really hate giving money to people who approach me on the street. I never really know if they really need it for the reasons they offer. I don't always make the same choice, but I know it's a no-win situation. If I give the person money, I walk away feeling like I've just been scammed. If I don't give the person money, I walk away feeling like crap for turning my back on someone who might have actually needed help. In either case, I know what money I give will actually do very little to improve the person's situation. I prefer to help people in need by supporting organizations that actually know how to effectively help people while weeding out scammers.

I shared the preceding story with you because I think it illustrates an internal conflict I've been experiencing lately. I've been wanting to write this introspection for a while now, but I've struggled to sort through all my thoughts and feelings on the matter.

Perhaps I should start with a couple of confessions.

First, I find it difficult to say no to people, and, when I do say no to someone, I beat myself up for it.

Second, I've become somewhat hesitant to help people.

There was a time when I wanted to be helpful, but, as I've noted previously, I've gone through some pain over the last few years. I've agreed to do things I never really wanted to do; I've been manipulated by people with agendas; I've ended up in some very difficult situations; and I've reached out to people only to leave them worse than I found them. Now, I'm a bit less eager to be helpful, and I like myself a lot less than I did several years ago.

The truth, if you haven't already figured it out, is that I'm a very insecure person. Sometimes I struggle to see the good in myself. I think that, at some point in the past, perhaps unconsciously, I resorted to people-pleasing in order to prove that I wasn't lazy, selfish, heartless, or useless. To be honest, I'm not quite sure if I was trying to prove my worth to other people or just to myself. Sometimes, I have trouble telling the difference between what I think of myself and what I'm afraid other people think of me.

My pattern of people-pleasing became too costly for me, as I began to break beneath the weight of what I thought people expected of me. I felt like everybody wanted something from me. I felt a sense of obligation to anyone who found a way to pull at my heartstrings, and I felt used and abused.

I realized that my preoccupation with what people thought of me was ruining my life. I realized that if I cared about what everyone thought of me, I would become enslaved to every person I met, and I would never get to live my own life. I knew I had to start saying no to people and allowing people to not be happy with me. As I've struggled to stop people-pleasing, my self-esteem has taken a hit. I realize that I cannot say no without disappointing someone, and, when I disappoint someone, I'm not particularly happy with myself. Not only do I feel like I've failed someone who needed me, the old insecurities rear their ugly heads, telling me that I'm useless and heartless.

For some reason, I got it into my head that, if somebody wants me to do something, no matter how much I don't want to do it, it is unkind or selfish of me to say no, unless it is absolutely necessary that I refuse. I might have the right to say no, but I feel that it would be wrong of me to use it. Often I look for excuses to not do what people want me to do, so that I have a somewhat legitimate reason to say no. In my worst moments, I become angry with people who want something from me, since I feel like I don't even have a choice in the matter.

I'm prone to loneliness, yet I think that sometimes I actually seek isolation in order to shield myself from people's expectations. I avoid people I've disappointed so that I don't have to face my shame for failing them, and I avoid people I think might want something from me so that I won't have to say no or do something I don't want to do. If I keep everybody at a nice, safe distance, then nobody wants anything from me, and I cannot hurt or disappoint anyone.

Lately, I've been struggling to figure out when I should do things for people. The old tapes that keep playing in my head are not helping. One keeps telling me that I'm not doing enough for people. Another reminds me that, if I can do something, then I should do it, even if I don't want to do it. Yet another tells me that, if I really cared about someone, I would give him or her the proverbial shirt off my back. One warns me that, if I don't help someone, nobody else will. Another tells me that other people's happiness or well-being depends on me. One suggests that, if I don't want to do something, it's probably God's will. One reminds me that I had better not turn my back on someone in need, because "goats" go to hell.¹

Sometimes I wonder if I might have some codependent tendencies. A codependent person feels that other people are utterly dependent on him, yet, at the same time, he is utterly dependent on the very same people for his own sense of self-worth. I use the word tendencies because I don't think I actually do enough for people to rightly call myself codependent. Still, I feel that people need me, and my self-esteem seems to depend on whether or not I help them.

Henri Nouwen suggested that there are three lies that people commonly tell themselves about who they are: I am what I have, I am what I do, and I am what other people say or think about me.² I think it's evident that I've bought some of these lies.

I still have a lot to sort out, but I've come to the conclusion that I have some internal work to do that goes beyond figuring out when I should help people. First, I need to finally take it to heart that ultimately I am not responsible for everybody else's health, happiness, and well-being. Though we all need each other's help from time to time, we are all responsible for our own lives, generally speaking. Second, I must not derive my self-worth from what I do for people. I am not quite sure how to cultivate a sense of self-worth, but I suspect it must have something to do with being a beloved child of God. Third, my decision to help someone must not be based on whether or not it makes me feel like a good person. Otherwise, I'm really just doing for myself what I'm supposedly doing for someone else.

Unfortunately, I don't have many conclusions to share about the matters at hand, because I'm still working things out in my own life. If you, the reader, have trouble saying no to people, find it hard to like yourself at times, or are not quite sure when you should help people, take comfort in knowing that you are not alone in your struggles.

Notes: