Would You Like Green Beans or a Lesson on Comfort
My alarm clock rang with that horrendous sound at 7:30am last Thursday. I pounded the bedside table searching for the snooze button and found it after a few bone rattling hits. This was not the sound I wanted to hear at this time of day on a holiday. I lay there a few minutes and contemplated my plight: I had to get up early on Thanksgiving.
We stopped by Oak View Baptist Church in Irving to pick up scores of containers of food. We were carting the food to a local apartment complex to feed 400 lower-income folks who had signed up for a complimentary thanksgiving dinner. We set up shop at the common room of the complex just in time to wait another couple hours to start serving. Technically I was glad that I was “serving,” but I didn’t sign up for waiting.
A handful of kids were playing football, jump rope, and catch in the common yard outside of our room. I went outside and started throwing a tennis ball with one of the boys outside. Soon, I was giving out balloons and tossing the football to some of the other kids. In about five minutes, I made some new friends.
The remainder of the food arrived shortly before our kickoff time at noon. We set up the serving lines and started making the plates. The food didn’t seem too be bad—and at times, I wanted to sit down and eat some of that very food. I think my growling stomach played a part of the process.
At first, I was going to serve green beans and corn bread dressing. The dressing stuck to the serving spoon like super-glue on skin, so we called in reinforcements to serve dressing. And so I spooned green beans.
I served a lot of beans. At least eight full trays of green beans. By the end of the afternoon, we had given food to around 200 who lived in that shabby apartment complex. I expected to have this wonderful emotional satisfaction: “I had gotten out of bed early to serve these people, and dangit, I’m going to feel good about myself for doing that good deed. I mean, how many people were willing to do that on their holiday?”
We cleaned up the room and went home, and I could only be glad that it was over.
Not long before we sat down to eat our version of Thanksgiving dinner, my brother-in-law’s brother, Brian, walked in. Brian is 29 and has cancer in his lower back. He hobbled up the stairs and across the room to the nicely appointed table. You would have expected his joints to crack as he gingerly sat down. He shaved his head a few weeks earlier to save himself the grief of plucking patches of hair from his head. Over time, a few islands of stubble reemerged on his very white scalp. You could tell that he was suffering, and you could tell that he didn’t want special treatment.
We ate dinner that day like every Thanksgiving. We thanked God for the food, the family and what we had and chowed down on things that tasted great. We sat around the table and had fun mocking each other while telling good stories. It was like always, but it was different.
I couldn’t help considering my day as I grabbed the plate of turkey for a second serving. I was hoping that my act of service would make me feel food about what a great person I was. Instead I realized that I expected my sacrifice of comfort to be more than it was. Serving people selfishly doesn’t make you a good person. It illustrates that you are a person who wants to appear better than they really are. And so I am: a person who wants to convince you that I’m nicer than I really am.
I was going to come home and tell the stories of how my family served Thanksgiving dinner to a bunch of needy people. And I was going to diffuse the compliments and “that’s cools” while basking in the glow of my good deed. But instead I left realizing that I really did nothing special. I served a few people on one day. A good deed—certainly—but nothing that says, “Andrew, you’re such a servant.”
Of course, I should neither be telling stories nor doing things to elicit that sort of reaction. Who really cares if I’ve convinced people into thinking that I’m a good person?
I glanced across the table and saw Brian sitting there. He seemed antsy to get up and kept fidgeting to find a comfortable position. I’m sure it’s tough to find a comfortable position when you have a tumor in your lower back.
The pain in his body has forced him to constantly keep moving. No position seems to be satisfying. At least not for any significant period of time. And so he moves.
I wonder how many times I get so comfortable with my life that I just sit there. I just sit there and do nothing. I become complacent with who I am and where I am. And I lack the desire to actually move around.
Serving people is like a kick in the butt for me. Watching Brian is another kick. I have become so comfortable in my life that I have become self-serving and lazy. I could have served 4,000 people on Thursday and the personal result would have been the same: I would have realized that a sacrifice of comfort is not really a sacrifice at all. Quite frankly, the world does not revolve around me and my satisfaction.
I hope that I don’t seek comfort in my life. It seems like that is not only meaningless, but a prescription for pain. Pain to disrupt that elusive comfort and help me to see that there is more to life than me.
Happy Thanksgiving. To Everyone.