Loving Without Complete Understanding [Bryan]

One of my favorite movies is A River Runs Through It, based on an excellent short story of the same name by Norman MacLean. The story deals with the beauty of fly-fishing, which is one reason I enjoy it. The other reason is that it talks about the difficulty in helping those that are struggling. Throughout the film, various families try, and fail, to help their struggling and wayward members. The film ends with a tragic death of a son, heavily involved with alcohol and gambling, who had refused all assistance. As the movie concludes, the father (a pastor) is gives the following sermon to his congregation:

Each one of us here today will, at one time in our lives look upon a loved one who is in need and ask the same question. "We are willing to help, Lord but what, if anything, is needed?"

It is true we can seldom help those closest to us. Either we don't know what part of ourselves to give or more often than not, the part we have to give is not wanted. And so it is those we live with and should know who elude us...

I want to be of use to the humanity. I really do. I would be my brother's keeper, I would learn the healer's art, and so forth, as it says in the hymn. I have found, however, that this is not so easy. Tragically, more often than not, we simply don't know how to help those around us. Most tragically, those who often elude our assistance are those we are closest to. We often think we are helping, but really aren't. More often than we would care to admit, we just make things worse.

People are often "weirded out" at our attempts at helping them. Our offers to help send different messages to different people. Some will love being helped, others will take it as a message that we think they are incompetent and weak; some people will really want our aid, others will find it degrading; some people will trust us as we lend a hand, others will be suspicious of our motives. The fact is, such people are not always wrong in taking things in a negative way (our motives, for example, are often impure).

An example: Yesterday, it snowed about six inches in Columbus. We have an older neighbor, a very nice man, that lives across the street. He lives alone and has had some heart trouble recently. After shoveling my driveway, I thought for a moment about shoveling his driveway. I went back and forth in my mind about it. "Would it make him uncomfortable if I shoveled his driveway?" I asked myself. I decided to do it, hoping that he would like being helped. The minute I started shoveling, however, I heard a snow blower start up in his garage. I looked over and it was my neighbor. I heard him call out, "Thank you," in a way that I interpreted as, "Thanks, I can handle this, now go away." I wasn't sure what to do. We chatted for minute, and I left leaving his driveway partly shoveled, feeling like he wanted to take over. Here is the thing: I am not sure I read interpreted this situation right at all. Maybe he was grateful and wanted to come help, and then was saddened when I left. Maybe he was getting ready to plow his driveway at that point anyway and was just surprised to see me there. Maybe I made him uncomfortable and he hurried out to try to stop me. I just don't know.

The only thing we can do, I suppose is follow the advice of Norman MacLean, speaking through his pastor father. "And so it is those we live with and should know who elude us, but we can still love them. We can love completely, without complete understanding."