Thoughts on Volunteering

This weekend was my church's Compassion Weekend, when we have the opportunity to go out and work on one or more volunteer projects in the community. It's a great program, encouraging us as Christians to serve in our community. I was very much looking forward to the experience. I signed up to volunteer in a resident home for senior citizens. I was sure the experience would be just wonderful for both me and the seniors. I was all ready to sign up for it on an ongoing basis, so convinced was I that this was what God wanted me to do.

Then reality intruded.

It didn't happen until after the activity leader gave his intro and told us what we would be doing. It sounded great to me - a short service with the seniors followed by visiting time. The leader said we would pair up with a resident and would probably feel drawn toward one of them, a sort God-made match-up. Cool, I thought.

As soon as we filed into the community room where the seniors were waiting for the service to start, I intuited it was not going to happen that way for me. For one thing, there were way more volunteers than residents, and about a third of us were without a senior. This was fine for the service, but afterwards was very awkward. Volunteers with a senior didn't seem to want to share. After a few moments, more seniors were brought in and the numbers began to even out. When I started approaching seniors without volunteers, I soon realized they had been left, that is, volunteers had been with them already and moved on for one reason or another. Some couldn't communicate or were out of it. Others couldn't speak English.

The remainder of the time was extremely awkward for me and generated a lot of negative thoughts on my part, which I'm still processing. I found myself wallowing in much self-doubt, feeling like the introverted social misfit that I was labeled as a child. Perhaps as a defense mechanism, or just in an effort to look at the situation honestly and stop berating myself, I took a long hard look around me.

Most of the volunteers were women - no big surprise there. I watched their behavior and I realized 1)that's not me and 2) I don't want that to be me. I'm not putting them down - they were very caring and nuturing. But some were treating the seniors like children, and others seemed overly familiar with them (they were all strangers to us). As they hovered around trying to give all the nurturing they could, all I could think of was: If I were one of those seniors, I would feel overwhelmed. And probably not with gratefulness. Gosh, I was overwhemed myself. It seemed like a competition for their attention.

The more I consider this situation, the more wrong it seems to me. And it was going to repeat three more times during the weekend in that same place. Many of those seniors were exhausted come lunch time.

I am cynical, I know. But I must be honest. It seemed to me that we were doing this more for ourselves than anyone else. So we could participate, so we could feel good about ourselves, so we could serve God. To be fair, I do believe I'm projecting a lot of my negative feelings onto my fellow participants. I also believe people were helped and God was served this weekend.

Near the end, a resident came in whom I spoke with for quite some time. By that time, many of the volunteers had already left, so I conversed with this woman uninterrupted. She seemed to enjoy the conversation and so did I.

I am first and foremost a one-on-one person. I enjoy relationship building. I like getting to know people - everyone has a story, most want to tell it, and I want to hear it. I don't deal well with groups; I get lost and confused and ultimately exhausted. I supposed that this activity would fit my strengths better, and perhaps on an ongoing basis, without a large group of other volunteers, it would.

Upon further reflection, I found myself thinking about the two times this week I've volunteered to help someone with their English. One is a woman I met at the senior home, oddly enough another volunteer. The other is man I know through a professional organization. I don't know why I offered to do this for them; I just found myself offering to help when they expressed a need. Is this still the Lord's work? I do think He led me to offer my help. I have a strong interest in communication, am fascinated by language, and am intrigued by other cultures. The thought of helping these people grow by improving their communication skills appeals to me because they need it, and I believe I can help. We will see where this goes.

I have learned much about volunteering this week. Not what I thought I would, but good lessons all the same. Isn't that often how God works?

Remember the Sabbath

After he created the world, God rested for a bit. Jesus made time for rest; his ministry was draining, and he needed time to pray and commune with the Father to regain his strength. Observing the Sabbath is a commandment, the fourth one, I think. In Jesus' time, there were certain Jews who made observing it onerous - one really couldn't do much of anything that could possibly be construed as work without being punished by the authorities.

Now it seems we have little or no Sabbath at all. The Protestant work ethic takes over; we work our fingers to the bone for God, our loved ones, and our fellow humans and wonder why we are so dang tired.

I definitely struggle with this problem. A whole day off? How could I possibly manage that? Yeah, from work, but what about my chores and other commitments? And what does it mean anyway? "Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work..." (Exodus 20: 8-10) Seems clear enough. But how is work defined? What if I love my job? Or what if everything seems like work? Or are we supposed to be in church all day? After a couple of weeks of that, I would definitely not look forward to the next Sabbath. Don't get me wrong - I enjoy attending church and find it revitalizing. But only for an hour or two.

Perhaps I hit the nail on the head in that last line. Worship, prayer, meditation, rest, recreation - all revitalizing activities that are appropriate for the Sabbath. Things that get me away from the constant chatter in my mind about what's next; that constant push.

I've long believed, even when I wasn't a practicing Christian, that if I have my priorities straight and follow through with them to the best of my ability, then everything else will fall into place, at least as much as it can in this lfe. Actually putting that belief into practice has happened seldom in my life. It takes faith, patience, and sometimes courage to make the Sabbath time a priority.

Maybe it's not a whole day per week. (But Jews who had much harder lives than us did it, so why can't we?) Maybe it's a few hours on a Sunday or Saturday afternoon, and then every few weeks make it up with several days. Whatever. God gave us this commandment for very good reasons. We need time off regularly. Whatever becomes work needs to be put down for a time while we rest our minds and bodies.

Yesterday I attended a talk by Mark Miller of Chick-fil-A, a company that closes its offices and all its restaurants on each and every Sunday. And they're opening 75 new restaurants a month, so they're doing very well. My cynical thought when he told us this was, "OK, but what are the other six days like? Are you going nuts all the time catching up?" Now I'm thinking if that were the case, they would have softened that practice. But they haven't. It works for them.

I want to try and make observing the Sabbath work for me.

Why this Blog?

Indeed. I am driven to write, and I have many journals that I write in on an irregular basis. I already have a blog about scrapbooking and have long railed against "self-centered" blogs that focus on nothing in particular and are basically online journals. OK, so I've done an about-face. This will be a self-centered blog, make no mistake!

The difference for me between posting to this blog and writing in my journal is that it's more public. There is actually a chance that someone will read my posts, although it is a very small chance. I may give out the URL to those I trust. This all is step, albeit a small one, out of my very small and private self, and a place to voice my thoughts where someone may actually listen.