How to Not Be the Savior

I don’t like power over, I like power with. I believe in coming alongside one another and lifting each other up, but this is a hard thing to do when you enter into a place as the giver, especially as a part of any organized humanitarian effort.

Before you hit me back with the cliche "but every time I come to serve I'm the one who ends up getting blessed," think about that statement and the expectation it sets. I've said it myself, believing those words to humble me from giver to recipient therefore equaling the playing field, but I don't think that's what it does. In actuality, I think it perpetuates the belief that 1.We are supposed to be rewarded for serving and 2. That reward is a good feeling - more specifically, a good feeling about ourselves.

Here's my take: if you don't occasionally walk away feeling stupid, frustrated, and/or wanting to punch a few people in the face, you haven't dived in deep enough or stayed long enough to know real relationship. Instead, you've boxed whoever it is into a people you treat like naive children because when it comes down to it, you really do think you are better - smarter, more sensible, and closer to "right" than they are.

This is an offensive challenge to our #bessedtobeablessing mentalities but I present it for your consideration because it was true of myself. I used to have an abundance of patience for people who kept playing me time and and time again. Granted, getting used is the name of the game in my field and I do believe there is a supernatural grace given to handle these types of things when we step into what and where we are called. However. I have now reached the point where if you try me, there's a good chance I will be calling you out and holding you accountable because I know you know we know each other too well for that. I see you as an equal and I expect you to treat me like one.

All of this stems from purposeful reflection because I cannot become someone who walks into a place deemed as poor, crime-ridden, and hopeless and mark myself a saint because I came. I am owed nothing for coming. In fact, no one there even asked me to come.

So how do we undo this mentality? How do we enter into a space with the intention to give but leave the Savior mentality behind? You do you but I'll tell you what did it for me:

1. Staying long enough to build relationships that live outside of scheduled events

2. Encountering situations where I had nothing to give

I think the first is relatively self-explanatory. If you're waiting on whatever organization to plan something for you to do, you've already lost the battle. Participation isn't good enough. In fact, it's kind of the worst. Participation is a passive way of pretending you care. Ownership, on the other hand, does not wait for action but demands it, first and foremost from oneself. Ownership is risky because it requires you to move forward under your own name, your own values, and your own time. Oh hey there relationship.

On to my second point. It is in times when I have nothing to give, no nicely wrapped gift of “here I fixed your problem” that I feel most like a friend.

"I don't know what to do."

"Me either."

The air feels heavy in these moments. I hear panic knocking on my door as I realize the only thing I can give is my presence, which doesn't even fix anything. It's in these moments that I am stripped of any opportunity to check a good deed box and am instead faced with the reality that while there are some things I can do to support others that they maybe could not have done on their own, I am not the final answer, I am just a friend. It's in these moments that I am humbled into lowliness. I do not walk away feeling good about myself; I walk away burdened for my neighbor and turning to God, the only one who can do something about the thing that both I and my brother/sister are helpless in. Oh hey there humanity.

I am no better. You are no better. We are no better than each other. But we do not have to have come from the same place or had the same story to belong to each other.

Take off the mask, erase the lines, hold hands with friends.