Toolbox For Faith

Eula Rae, our oldest member, will turn 98 in less than two months. She lives by herself but loves for people to visit with her, especially her pastor. She has been through, in her words, “the most difficult time in my life” over the past two months due to the death of her only daughter.

Last week, I traveled the two plus blocks from the church to see Eula Rae and found her sitting on her porch behind her beautiful, blooming azaleas. As I walked up, she recognized me and got up from the glider where she was sitting. She asked me to come into her house but I suggested that we sit on the porch on the glider since it was such a magnificent day. “Oh, no,” she replied, “I need to entertain the pastor in my living room.”

I smiled and told her that I was fine on the porch so we stayed. I probably should have gone into the living room because she was constantly checking to make sure the glider was not too hard while telling me that we could still go into the living room.

Visiting Eula Rae is always a great experience as she shares wonderful stories with an even more exceptional outlook. I have discovered that if I need a lift, I visit Eula Rae and I feel better for at least a week afterwards. Even in the midst of death, she radiates hope. God’s world needs more Eula Rae’s.

With great fear and trepidation, I emptied the contents of the very large box labeled “utility dump cart” with the added note “assembly required” on the garage floor last Monday. I have been traumatized for life by “assembly required” boxes. I remember the utility building I put together for my mother. I put in 641 screws—not counting the over 200 I put in the wrong place and then removed—and this was before electric screwdrivers. And then there was the first swing set I assembled. It said “5 minute frame” on the outside but I discovered that even Superman could not have put it together in five minutes. And then there were the directions for the swing set. They included instructions for 9 different sets, none of which were the one we purchased, and were written by someone who had English as a very distant second language.

With shaking hands, I pulled the instructions from the heap of parts and started reading. These instructions had special rubrics—written in red—for the assembly challenged people like me. The first read in very large letters, “If you read and follow these instructions, this product can be assembled in 55 minutes or less. If you don’t read these instructions, assembly may take over two hours!” Simple and to the point which made sense to me. Then all the parts you were assembling in each stage were highlighted in red. Even with a break to get a large ice tea on the 90 degree, record high day and with another break to talk to my neighbor and corral one of our cats for the neighbor girls to pet, I finished in a personal best, amazing one hour and ten minutes.

As I reflected on the experience, Ken Callahan’s words came to me, “Give just enough help to be helpful!” The instructions did that. It is a wonderful lesson for life. Always give just enough help to be helpful. If we give too much help, we create a dependency relationship that is never helpful. That is a hard lesson to learn but my congratulations to Sears—you did it right this time. The instructions were easy to follow and made sense. I am still traumatized but I have hope.