I’m writing a series of posts about learning to love well. In my last post, Experiencing the Universal Source of Love, I noted that loving well means that I give myself to others in a costly, sacrificial, and unconditional manner. It is an unselfish, unconditional, unconquerable benevolence.
For most of my life, I believed that loving well meant that I was responsible for taking care of others – especially when they felt bad. Love was equivalent to helping you feel good. When you were in pain, were struggling, or wanted something to change, if I loved you, I stepped up to the plate to help you feel better.
Making A Distinction
One of the biggest steps forward in learning to love well came when I made the distinction between caring for others and taking care of others.
The clue to understanding the distinction between caring for and taking care of is that both you and I actually feel good when I take care of you. I feel good when you need me. You feel good when I take responsibility for your “stuff.” The problem is that when I take care of what you are responsible for, I’m not loving you. I’m enabling you to stay stuck. That’s not love.
When Betty and I helped start Harbor Church, we found ourselves living in community with a large number of young adults who were in recovery. Early on, I discovered that I have a deep well of compassion in me. As others told me their stories, I would be very sad for their pain, and I would feel a deep sense of urgency to help.
Help initially meant rescuing them from their bad choices. I would give them a place to stay when they got kicked out of their home for using drugs. I would give them money to pay rent when they came up short. After a while, I grew tired of that and recognized its futility. So I began to give them advice. Here’s what you should do. If you’ll do this, your pain will go away and then I would exert considerable persuasive energy to get them to take my advice. Finally, when they wouldn’t take my advice, I would disengage because I couldn’t stand to see them in pain.
What belongs to me, and what belongs to you?
One day through the help of a pastor/friend, something opened up for me. She asked, “Why are you enabling these people?”
I was stunned. How could she so profoundly misunderstand what I was doing? I was loving them in the most sacrificial way possible. How could she not see that? I said as much – with a bit of intensity. To her credit she stayed in the conversation with me.
She said, “It’s their pain that causes you to do what you do?”
I said, “Yes.”
She said, (and this time with emphasis) “It’s THEIR pain that causes you to do what you do?”
I said, “Yes!”
She said, “If it is their pain – it belongs to them, why are you taking responsibility for it?”
It didn’t happen instantaneously, but that day I got the first glimmer of what I’m trying to convey here. I began to see that I was taking responsibility for their pain because of some pain that was in me. It was my own woundedness that caused me to feel so much compassion. But it was much easier for me to take care of them in an effort to ease their pain than it was to face my own pain. I was using them to meet my own need.
The story of Jesus and the Rich Young Ruler began to take on new meaning for me. The young man was in search of something. He asked Jesus for advice, and Jesus told him a really hard truth. The young man was unwilling to hear that truth and he walked away. From a deep well of strength Jesus didn’t chase after him.
In time I learned that I was addicted to taking care of others just as much as those in my community were addicted to drugs. I would have chased after the young man and tried to persuade him to take my advice. Or on the opposite extreme I might have judged the young man in an attempt to shame him into following my advice.
I wish that I could tell you that understanding my addiction to taking care of others gave instant insight and change. The truth is that change took time and it was painful. But it was also liberating in ways I could never have imagined.
The bad news is that I wounded a lot of people by trying to take care of them along the way. The good news is that with the help of my pastor/friend, my wife, Betty, and several other people who cared for me but refused to take care of me, I began to attend to my own wounding. I took responsibility for taking care of myself.
I grew my capacity to care for these young addicts. Caring for them was different than taking care of them. I took care of them when I took responsibility for what belonged to them. I cared for them when I told them the truth about the consequences they were facing. I cared for them when I stayed intentionally connected to them even in the most anxious of times. I cared for them when I offered to drive them to the treatment center and to visit them while they were there. I cared for them when I prayed for them.
I Bought Into A Lie
As I struggled to learn the difference in caring for and taking care of others, I also learned a deeper lesson. I had bought into a lie that is pervasive in our culture. It is the lie that love makes you feel good. It’s perpetuated in the conviction that if God loves me, God will make me feel good.
As I continued to learn, I came to see something very different about the God revealed in the Bible. It’s found everywhere but no more powerfully than in the story of the Exodus. God heard the cry of the Israelites who were slaves in Egypt, and God acted to set them free. As they journeyed toward the Promised Land, they became increasingly disheartened. Learning to live as free people was really painful.
Why wouldn’t God make things easier? Although God heard their complaints, God did not move to take responsibility for them learning to live as free people. God cared for them in the wilderness but God refused to take care of them.
Often the deepest and most profound expressions of love don’t make us feel good.
Love challenges me to see where I am stuck and challenges me to take responsibility for myself.
That’s so counter to our American culture and to the contemporary church culture, but it is deeply, profoundly what the bible teaches us.
As I learned these lessons in my work in the recovery community, I discovered that I was taking care of others in a lot of my relationships. Shifting from taking care of to caring for was a challenging. I can still get tripped up pretty easily. But, I am being guided by a vision where the mature love that I want to master calls me to take care of me and to care for others