Apple Juice, Cabinets, & Grace

I was in pre-school and it was snack time.

My teacher had passed out the graham crackers that we had for every snack and began to walk around the room to pour apple juice into our tiny cups for our tiny little bodies to enjoy. On this particular day, I decided to help my teacher out. As she poured it into my cup, I reached up with my little fingers, and pushed the end of the apple juice carton thinking that it was heavy and she needed help lifting it.

Well…I almost helped her make a very large mess. If she hadn’t been paying attention that apple juice would have been all over the table, the chairs, the floor, and of course all over me.

“What are you doing?!” my teacher asked in her teacher voice. You know, the one that sternly suggests you’re doing something wrong. Her hand went to her hip, her eyes narrowed slightly. I know exactly what it looked and sounded like because I know my own teacher voice is pretty similar.

“Helping?” I said incredulously, surprised by her panicked tone.

I thought she would thank me, but she began to laugh. She called out to the teacher’s assistant across the room “Melissa just tried to help me pour the juice!”

And they laughed for a few more moments, and I sat there looking at my juice and crackers. I was four, and that’s the first time that I remember ever feeling embarrassed about something. I was only trying to help; I didn’t like being laughed at.

 Now, this is not some kind of sob story about being developmentally shamed and damaged because a teacher laughed at me. I am a type-A perfectionist with low self-esteem issues, but I promise it’s not because of a single incident that occurred when I was four years old. No, I'm sharing this story with you to show you that I've always been the kind of person that just really likes helping people.

When my little brother was a baby he had horrible acid reflux. Thankfully I have no memory of any type of projectile baby barf, but my mother has told me that on more than one occasion Michael would throw up four of his six ounces of formula, and without a word I would skip off to go find a rag and wipe him back up. All the while cooing and coddling “It’s okay Michael. You’re ok. We’ll get you cleaned up. Everything is okay.”

 Poor Michael.

The boy hardly said a word until I went off to kindergarten. I wouldn’t let him! I constantly just walked around as a kid and said “Michael doesn’t want that.” “Michael doesn’t like that.” “Michael only likes green beans if you cut them in half.” “Michael doesn’t like Barney. He only wants to watch Blue’s Clues.”

Michael was like...eighteen months old. He probably didn’t have that many opinions at all, but I made sure that I gave them to him. When mom asked the pediatrician why he wasn’t talking around two or three years old the pediatrician laughed and replied “Why would you talk if you had someone to talk for you?” When I left for school and wasn’t around as much during the day, the kid started talking up a storm. I thought it was my job to help him talk.

(He turned out totally fine, for the record. He’ll be twenty in a few months, is six feet tall, and can out-sport me in any category. He’s super smart, and on a regular four year college plan to graduate with a degree in economics.)

Another example: this past July I went on a mission trip to Las Vegas Nevada. My church partnered with a local church in the area, and volunteered in the community helping out where we could. One afternoon we volunteered at a children’s home facility, and we helped the owner movie furniture and clean up.

Well, I should say that the guys moved the furniture. There were a lot of really heavy tables, couches, and chairs that had to be moved out of storage. The girls volunteered to assemble a few pieces of furniture and clean the windows and baseboards.

Let me give a brief breakdown of Melissa Jennings' personality: I am creative & imaginative. I am a rule follower.  I love reading, writing, listening to music, and singing loudly when no one is around. I love being helpful. I love listening to people. I love listening to stories about people. I am super quiet until I get to know you, and then I just never shut up. I am not analytical. I am not a tinkerer.  I am not good at math or diagrams. I have a horrible time with abstract thinking & visualization. I know I'm not good at any kind of assembly-type job, but I really, genuinely, just like to help whenever I can...

So when the volunteer coordinator at the children’s home facility asked for volunteers to assemble furniture and no one volunteered within three seconds guess who’s hand shot up?

Mine. (Because that makes total sense. Doesn’t it? Let's volunteer for the ONE job I know I won't be able to do very well...)

So we walk into a room with furniture in piles all over the place. Bed frames were on top of couches. Couches were on top of refrigerators and tables. Tables were turned upside down and inside out and things were strewn about everywhere. The guys got to work on moving and re-organizing. One of the other guys in our group got to work on assembling a swivel chair, and I stared at a large, metal, storage cabinet. The little teacher inside of me was excited. “Ooooh a teacher cabinet. This will be easy. All I have to do is put the door handles on. I’ll be done in five minutes.” 

Wrong. So wrong. SO so wrong.

Step One: Insert rods into top and bottom of door through black plastic rod guides already installed.

      Ok…well there’s like four rods in here. Which rod do I put in the guides? The rod with the handle or the rod without one? I’ll try this one… CRASH!!! Oops. Ok. That one slipped. So it’s not that one. It has to be the oth-

      “You got it Melissa?” asked the guy working on the swivel chair.

      “Yep! Just need to figure some rod stuff out. Once I can figure out where it goes this will be a piece of cake.”

      Ok. Other rod goes here. Snaps in place here and then-……but it bends in the middle? I can’t put it in place if it bends in the middle. OH there’s a hole here for a screw. Ok. So I have to hold this with one hand, reach for a screwdriver, hold the screw with this hand, hold the rod into pla- CRASH!! Ugh. I dropped the stupid rod again.Ok. This time I’ll get the screwdriver fir- wait. Hold it. Which one is the Phillips head again? The flat one or the criss crossy one? Crap. I have no idea what I’m doing. Why does this diagram look like one of my seven year olds drew it? It says to take a screw AND a bolt. What the heck is a bolt? The swirly thing or the flat thing with the hole in-

       “Melissa are you sure you got it? I can try to help you in just a minute when I finish with the chair.” He was putting the first of the two arms on the swivel chair and on step eight of ten on his furniture assembly project. 

We’re ten minutes into this adventure. I’m still on step one. I should have said yes. I should have said that I didn’t know what I was doing after all, so I’m going to go clean a baseboard. You can try to tackle this in a few minutes. But of course I didn’t.

      “No no no, I’m just trying to figure out a couple of things is all. Once I can see where these couple of screws go it’s going to be super easy. You can go help the other guys if you want to when you’re done. I’ll be fine.”

      Less than ten minutes later the swivel chair was done.

      Fifteen minutes after that the room full of topsy-turvey, chaotically skewed furniture was completely re-organized and looked amazing.

      Three minutes later the guys were moving on to the next project.

I was left with a screwdriver, a poorly illustrated diagram, a rod that was firmly in place, a door handle and a handful of pieces that I had been staring at and messing around with for a little more than an hour. Refusing to ask for help.

Another twenty minutes goes by and I still can’t align the stupid screws in the right positions. At one point I had the door handle on FINALLY, only to see that I put it on completely upside down. I had to unscrew it, and start over on that side of the cabinet.

(I won't lie...there may have been a tear at that point.)

Two girls in our group walked in, surprised to say the least that I was still working on putting on the door handle of the same metal cabinet. They were sisters. One was in high school, and one was in middle school.

“Can I try?” asked the younger sister. 

“Ummmm…sure? But it’s not easy.” I smiled to myself as I watched her look at the diagram and the pieces strewn about.

She’s so cute trying to assemble the stupid little cabinet. Poor kid. I should probably stop her before she gets frustrated.

“The diagram is a joke and the screws keep getting stuck and we should probably just wait until the guys get-” and I stop.

Ya’ll. 

As I’m thinking and talking this girl has already correctly reassembled what’s taken me almost two hours in a matter of two minutes.

“I love this kind of stuff.” She said. “Putting things together is one of my favorite things to do.”

I felt like a cartoon character. If my jaw could have physically dropped on the floor I think it would have.

In a whipsered scream of exasperation I say "WHY didn’t you say you wanted to do it when she asked for volunteers???”

“You seemed like you really wanted to help.” She said with a shoulder shrug.

You seemed like you really wanted to help.

Man, do those words get me into trouble. I have really good intentions, but sometimes people don’t need my help. They don’t need me to swoop in and save the day. They don’t need me to fix things that aren’t broken, or even try to assemble things that are. Sometimes the person has it under control. Like my teacher with the apple juice. Or Michael and his own personal opinions on green beans or Barney the dinosaur. Or middle schoolers with an unreal superpower to assemble furniture.

This is hard for me to admit, but do you know who else really doesn't need my help?

God.

He doesn't need me to fix things. He doesn't need me to meddle with things. He doesn't need me to panic and obsess over things. He's God. He is good. And He's got this. 

God doesn't need my help to make His job any easier. He won't be disappointed in me for asking for help when I need it. He won't be angry. He won't be sad. He won't be stressed out. He doesn't need my help to make His life any easier. He doesn't need my help to do everything on the planet. That's not my job. That's His job. MY job is to be readily available for Him to use me when He needs to use me  WANTS to use me. He doesn't really need me at all. 

He can hold an ocean back with a shore. An ocean that he can measure in the palms of his hands! 

Have you seen an ocean before folks? It's ginormous. It covers most of our planet. 

Have you washed your face off recently? Have you seen how much water you can hold in your hands? (Hint: It's not that much...) 

God is HUGE. Bigger than anything we could imagine. He is powerful, and he is more than capable of doing absolutely anything and everything completely on His own. He doesn't need me to help with anything, but He blesses me by allowing me to! Not because He needs me to prove myself or my worth to Him or to the people around me, but because He knows that it will glorify who He is.

Sooooooooo what do you do when you realize that your eager, Type-A, overbearing helpfulness isn't always the answer to everything? When you realize that a lot of time people have it under control and you don't need to swoop in and save the day? When you realize that God doesn't need your help in controlling the universe?

Most people would be relieved.

Melissa Jennings kind of freaked out. 

Because helping is what I feel like I'm kind of good at. I don't have any cool talents. I'm not very interesting. I'm not very brave. I'm not double jointed, and I don't have the ability to lick my nose with my tongue, so I'm pretty ordinary.

So, first, my pride took a big beating. 

But I don't have a pride problem!!!

That's what I said. But I've realized recently that people with pride issues probably wouldn't walk around saying that they have a pride issue...that would make them kind of humble. Which is the opposite of prideful, so you can see the contradiction there. I'm definitely more prideful than I care to admit, and that's a scary thing to face sometimes. Because the reality is that I do NOT know better than God does. I don't get to make this picture perfect life plan and tell God that this is how we're going to do it. How arrogant is that? And then to get mad and throw a hissy fit when it's not going my way? Seriously? 

Second, I realized how completely ridiculous it is to worry about things that I have absolutely no control over.

Psh I never worry about anyt-

Just kidding. 

If you know me at all you know I worry if the wind blows funny, or if my phone makes a weird noise. BUT, I will say that I'm slowly realizing that panicking about...like...literally anything...is not helpful to God. It's not helpful to you. It's not helpful to me. It's not really helpful at all. So now when I catch myself hyperventilating over due dates or assignments I can calm myself down a little quicker.

Then, I began to find the freedom that comes with Grace and the Gospel.

B...b...but I know what the Gospel is. I know what Grace is.

Yes, but I don't always act like it. There's a difference between living with the head knowledge of the truth and living like you believe the truth. And when you stop walking around with this urgent agenda of I have to do more and be more and do better and be better you're able to take a deep breath and just be. Period. 

Apple Juice and Cabinets don't define me.

And by that I mean that every failed attempt at helping someone that has backfired or gone horribly awry does not define me. The fear of disappointment and failure doesn't define me. And if this is what you struggle with, it doesn't define you either. It's easier to say it than to believe it, but the love and grace of Christ is what defines us. 

He doesn't need my help, but I know I need His. And tonight I'm thankful for every bit of grace He has given me and every mercy that He has made new every morning. 

I hope you find some peace in those promises too. It's good to be reminded sometimes. :)