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I wanted to share something. After years of being expected to do things I didn’t want to do in the Church, or that were dastardly inconvenient, after years of “giving until it hurts” and being berated for not stepping up for inconvenient service, I have completely lost my desire to serve others. My interests lie in training and teaching my family, which has a number of challenges in basic life skills (like cleanliness, for example — something we’ve been conquering lately through extreme focus on my part), focusing on my career, getting more education, getting my house organized, exercising and some minor hobbies.
I recognize the need and benefits of service, and even teach my kids to do it by brief service projects where we find a public area that is dirty and clean it up (like a bus stop). But these are short and about all I can tolerate.
I think that over time I’ve grown to associate service with angst. Also, I don’t feel like reaching out to people in our Ward because when I start asking them about their lives, they often come out with needs I could fill, and then, I have a lot of extra work to do in my already strapped time schedule. So I tend to be an aloof island at Church, only reaching out to people on topics of mutual interest that I find truly engaging.
I never used to be this way — honestly. But now, I don’t move people, do home teaching and hope that it’s limited to a single visit a month, (I hope for no sudden calls to drop everything and move a fridge or give a blessing). I never volunteer for anything, like setting up chairs or other opportunities for service.
Beyond the bus-stop cleanups once a month or every 6 weeks for 30 minutes, I don’t do much to serve others. And this bothers me — I want to want to do it, but I don’t WANT to do it….comments about how to get out of this rut?
What’s your advice?
For me, one of the big problems with loving and serving is that people don’t always want it, or refuse it. Some people really hate charity of any kind, even when they are desperate.
Other people think of help as interference.
Sometimes people think you are helping only for ulterior motives, which is not always true. I’ve tried to help people in the past and been accused of doing it for some other reason which hadn’t even occurred to me. For example, once I was trying to broker peace between two people, and it was twisted to seem as if I was “sleazy” and trying to silence one of the parties. Not a pleasant experience, and completely at odds with what I was intending.
Find people who need help badly that you haven’t served in the past – and give them the help they really need. Go to a nursing home and sit with someone who has no family to visit her.
Go to a hospital and hold someone who is dying of AIDS.
Go to a school and read to little children.
Go to a homeless shelter for families and give them small gifts outside of the Christmas season.
Go to a battered women’s shelter and help teach them job skills so they can survive on their own – or just hold a baby so a mother can get away for a few minutes.
Exactly what you do is up to you, but find someone who normally would qualify as a publican, sinner, leper or Samaritan in your eyes and serve them until you see them differently.
Choose whom and how you serve – but absolutely serve.
I did the hair of a member once who was married to a high council man. Her health was not very good and she never wore any make-up. She always looked pasty white and sickly. I asked her once if she ever wore any make-up. She said, “No, because if I do, members think I am no longer sick and then ask me to do all sorts of stuff. Agreeing with what Ray said. A small service that you could do that wouldn’t “feel” to servicey is to bake some cookies and take it to someone. You could even drop them on the door step if you don’t want to interact, just tape a small note (or not). But I know that taking baked goods to some of the older people in the ward always is a good experience. They just like to have company.
Doing that just requires you give up a dozen of the cookies you made so you have some still for your family and you have done a kindness to someone else. Try that and see how it works for you.
SD – when I read this post I had a revelation on the spot. Here it is. The Dalia Lama, who teaches us to “live a better way,” made a great comment. He said, “Help others as much as you can. And if you can’t help them, at least do them no harm.” That is how I live now. I really have very little to do with the church anymore outside of Sunday services. At least I’m not hurting them, right? Perhaps it will work for you to.
I also like what others said. Sometimes we (our culture) thinks that service and charity only counts if it done with the church’s consent or part of a church program, and that if you don’t help the LDS neighbor move or do your home teaching or scrubbing church tiolets you are not serving others. I reject that notion utterly, and try to focus on serving MY FAMILY explicitly, as well as my non-LDS neighbors and community. Of course, that is easy here as there are only a handful of members anyway, but, I’m sure there are other ways to serve beside the standard cultural and traditional methods that we were conditioned to believe.
cwald wrote:… but, I’m sure there are other ways to serve beside the standard cultural and traditional methods that we were conditioned to believe.
I’ve decided I’m going to try to help a young girl in our Ward. She came over to spend time with my daughter. I took a moment to show her how to play the ukelele for a few minutes. She kept going back to it over and over again long after we were done with the lesson. Her mother told my wife that it was all she talked about it when she got home, and that she used to take violin lessons, but had to stop due to financial problems.
I’m going to repair one of my old ukeleles and let her use it, plus give her a couple formal lessons. If she practices and shows continued interest, my daughter and I are going to go haves on a new one for her, and I will give her some regular lessons in such a way the family isn’t out-of-pocket any money. I see value in instilling the joy of music in young children, and I think this is something I can do for its own sake.
What a wonderful decision. Two women in our former ward allowed our daughters to continue to take piano and dance lessons at no charge while I was unemployed, and we will remember them until the day we die.
I am a germ-phobic person, can’t do the whole buffet and/or potluck thing because I don’t know where the food came from or who prepared it. Anyway, I have a student who is borderline, well, she is “slow”, and not the most hygienic person on the planet. She comes to my class after her home ec class, and she brings me food she has made EVERY damn day. I always accept it, sometimes I even EAT some of it in front of her, before I secretly dispose the rest of it behind the shop. That my friends, is what I call service and being charitable. That is a great idea, SilentDawning! Let us know how it goes. cwald- I know what you mean. That is why I would include a note on it because I don’t like to eat something I don’t know where it came from either.
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