Risking Kindness

My brother got married last week, which raised to three the number of weddings between the Swenson and Balducci families since September. That leaves us at three down, one to go, with one more brother getting married this fall.

In the midst of all these celebrations, my family has been on the receiving end of a lot of love – not necessarily grand sweeping gestures (though there were some of those, too) but mostly a hundred little ways that friends and neighbors have shown kindness and support. People have been quick to offer help in anyway we need it, and many times I have been desperate enough to say yes.

Last week, as I was preparing for the rehearsal dinner (which Paul and I hosted), I got a call from a friend. Is there anything I can do, she asked, what do you need? And the only thing I could think of was my bridesmaid’s dress and how it needed ironing. I hesitated to ask, it seemed like such an insignificant thing. But then I thought of all the other things on my To Do List, and how ironing my dress kept going further and further down that list.

I took a deep breath and admitted that yes, there is this one thing but if it’s too much don’t worry about it. And before I could talk myself out of asking, my friend quickly said yes and that was that.

The next morning I was running to the grocery store in a frantic last-minute haze. My cell phone rang -- another friend, another offer of help. Again I hesitated, but then admitted my need.

“I know this is silly,” I told her, “but could you make guacamole for the luncheon?” She quickly said yes and I dropped off the ingredients on the way home. Such a small thing – but then again, not really.

At one point, I needed something from a shop in a small town 30 minutes down the road. My mom suggested I call her good friend who lives there (and regularly drives in to our city). I worried about being a nuisance, but my desperation helped me work up the courage to ask her anyway. The friend was so happy to help, and thanked me for allowing her to serve.

Service in time of need, I am learning, takes two things – it takes a desire to serve, but also a willingness to offer (or to ask). We may have the best of intentions, but usually it takes picking up the phone to make your intentions known.

And sometimes that can be risky.  

I have this tendency, when friends are in stressful times, to pull back. I start to fly under the radar. It’s not that I don’t want to help or to offer support. But I worry about being a bother, about being just another phone call in a sea of phone calls. What if I call at a bad time, I worry. What if the last thing this person needs is someone else calling to see what can be done when all she really wants is the phone to stop ringing!

As I have walked through this season of festivities and celebrations and stress, I’m recognizing the incredible need to risk kindness – to risk calling at a bad time instead of not calling at all, to risk asking for help instead of going it alone. And while this certainly carries a degree of common sense along with it, I think in the end the kindness will be more appreciated than the distance.