On Stewardship

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in...

On Black Friday, holiest of holidays for many, my boyfriend's mother fell asleep at the wheel and crashed her car into a guardrail. As I write this, she is in surgery having some of her broken spinal bones fused together, while her family waits to see what's next. Because her family is sometimes my family, I guess I'm waiting, too.

We went last evening after Ryan (said boyfriend and partner) got out of work to visit her at Lehigh Hospital. Ryan's father and sister were already there, on cell phones and making themselves useful with a water-dabbing contraption. Ryan's mother was laid out on a table, head pointed up at the ceiling and braced so as to not move any precious bones around. She looked banged up and scared. Ryan told some stories and spent general time with his family. I became small controller of my immediate universe, as I am always apt to do in semi-crises, and asked for fluids and pain medications and anything else that didn't look like it was being done by the nurses, and openly judged the hospital staff. It's how I contribute.

I love this little family, and I am hyper-aware right now of how their lives are likely going to change from this event. Ryan's mother is always moving; he calls her a "busy-body" in the very literal sense of the word - she is never sitting still, and is always doing for the house or the church or the family. For the foreseeable future, that won't be happening, and I can't hep but think about how that will impact Ryan and his father, and his sister's family. When one part of a working system stops working, every other part either fails to work as well, or accommodates itself and changes too. This leaves room for learning, love, and personal development, as well as frustration and resentment. The chips will fall where they may; I have no idea where yet.

I realize the event will likely change me, too. My partner's response will elicit changes in me. My time and skills may be called upon for certain things, and I'll have to do what I think is best for the situation, including what is best for Ryan's mother and family, and what is best for me. I am aware that those things may not always be compatible with one another, and I'm interested to see what kind of person I'll be in this situation.

I know how to take care of other people very well, I've been doing it forever, I was my family's go-to helper for years. I renounced helper around age 21, when I became so sick with help that I was forced to attend to myself (this happens to unskilled helpers. I really do think Penn needs a class on self-care. Really). I've spent the past eleven years building on the art of helping myself: first, hearing my needs, then responding to them as though they were someone else's, then becoming important enough to myself that I responded to them because they were mine. I've been working on the nasty business of guilt for the past several years, and don't expect to be through with that one for at least a decade. But I'm active with it.

So this might be my first opportunity in this work on the care of self and others to see what happens when the two are brought together - what it looks like for me to give and also set boundaries, to juggle both the care of the self and the very present and constant care of someone else. I really have no idea what I'll bring to the table here. But I do feel willing, and I'm encouraged by that.

A final thought: My belief in God has morphed into something that I realized today looks more like this: I'm not much for the idea that there is someone upstairs controlling events and making thigns happen or not happen. I think all of us down here do a good job of making both terrific and terrible things happen and not happen. But when they do, I do think that God presents itself in the opportunity to respond, and to be stewards for one another, and for ourselves, and also that learning the art of this stewardship might be the whole point. I hope it is.