A Heart for Service

I sat combing the knots out of the dark, waist-length hair of Sissy, the much younger sister of my sixty-year old friend Betty. After her sister was admitted for attempted suicide, Betty informed me it was my job to come to the hospital to comb her sister’s messy hair. I didn’t know anywhere in the How-To-Be-A-Friend manual it said I had to show up to comb the hair of a friend’s suicidal sibling. But whenever generous Betty called and demanded my help for another, I went and gave it.

Sissy leaned up against me as I worked on her hair. Concerned I might cause even more pain, I carefully held each tendril so the pulling and pressure was stopped by my left hand as I used the right to brush each long piece starting at the tip and working my way up to her scalp.

Betty angled forward so her younger sister had to look at her. “Why would you try to kill yourself? You were happy. You said you were the happiest you had ever felt.”

“I don’t know. I kept thinking this couldn’t last.”

“But Jack loves you. And you love him. He thought you were happy, too. He said you were smiling when you went back in the bedroom and took all those pills. You hurt him.”

“I know but… maybe someday he won’t love me. I couldn’t face that pain again. I just ….” She trailed off.

As I listened I knew I was hearing the words and anguish of an abused child, a child who had learned love couldn’t be trusted, anger and rejection always followed the tiniest bit of joy. I kept my head down and focused on the knots.

Betty said, “I feel like that sometimes, too, Sissy. I’ve told you what to do when you feel like that. Just pray and ask God for someone to help. After you help you’ll feel better.”

I stiffened, an alert hunting dog who sniffed her prey. Was this the secret to how Betty had developed a heart for service? Was her brutal childhood the cause of her generous heart?

Betty sprang up. “Margaret and I are going to get a snack.”

This was news to me but like I said, when Betty ordered, I obeyed. I stroked Sissy’s hair one last time then stood to follow my friend. We walked quickly out of the room, and down the cold, industrial-like corridor to the elevator. The empty hallway gave us the privacy needed for Betty to explain.

“I grew up in that same house. I was treated the same way. I get depressed, too. But whenever I feel upset or start thinking about those days, I ask God to give me someone to help.” She scrunched her face up, her eyes shut tight, her hands closed so hard they shook as she demonstrated the intentness with which she listened for the answers to those prayers. “And I always think of someone. And then I help them and I do feel better. But I can’t get Sissy to do it.“

Betty’s words reminded me of my friend Judy. Judy told me once that you can’t get purple without red. I thought no kidding. But then she explained that she had asked God why she had had to endure the sexual abuse by a favorite uncle. She could take every other disaster in her life but just that one thing. She felt God’s reply in her heart. “What is the character trait you are most proud of?” It was her ability to act immediately in a crisis situation. And at that moment she saw how that abuse led to developing that trait; the red in her sky-blue life that gave her a lovely purple.

Was Betty’s childhood the red that developed her beautiful heart for service? Not the abuse but the constant prayer and action that helped her heal from the abuse, kept her thinking of how she could help other people, always looking for those in her life who needed what she could give.

Could I pray the prayer, develop the same heart without the cause?