I often see people saying “Look for the helpers is for kids, you’re the adult, YOU’RE the helper!” a lot, but Mr. Rogers wouldn’t have said kids can’t help, and he definitely wouldn’t have said adults should “just do it” instead of looking around for people who are already doing the work, learning from them and following their lead, and then joining in with where their abilities meet the actual needs and requests of those they are helping. The work is already being done, and we can’t just “be the helper” without understanding it and our place in it.
You are not too young to be a helper. And you are not too old to need help, to defeat despair with hope, and to join in the work already in motion. Remember it’s about when we are shocked by tragedy and overwhelmed by suffering. It’s about what you do when you’re staring down images of death and disaster, and then it’s about where to look next. You see the debris on TV. You see the virus totals. You see the crying kids. But then… you see the firefighters, doctors, nurses, volunteers, etc. Ah. There.
It’s still Giving Tuesday as I’m writing this, and maybe you can be a helper in a recurring or one-time donation. Maybe you don’t have money but you have a few hours to spare, if you bring the kids along with you. Maybe you don’t have time or money, but you have a social media following to inform others, a place of influence in policy, an organization you lead, a church or club you can rally, a professional skill you can use pro bono, a boat or a car or a business to run aid and relief efforts from.
Whether you’re defending human rights by filing suits and explaining contracts, or book-keeping for a nonprofit, or paying a construction crew out of your own pocket to rebuild the community center after a big storm, there’s a way to help. You can be an 8-year-old shopping for an Angel Tree gift or a 90-year-old knitting blankets for foster babies or a 60-year-old making phone calls and grocery runs for a disabled neighbor. You can look, LEARN from the helpers, and go do it too.
But please, I say this delicately, do not jump in like a missionary, hero-complex White savior and try to just “help” without looking to the helpers first. No one needs the worn-out-snow-coats sent to Haiti after the earthquake incident ever again. No one wants your broken appliance as a “donation” they have to be grateful for. Nonprofits can’t spend all their time making you feel needed. No finding youth pastors a house in a Latin American country for teens to paint over and over each summer as a mission trip or service project. Remember when the hospitals asked us to stop hand-making masks and dropping them off at the start of COVID because they aren’t adequate medical PPE and weren’t safe/sterile/tested, and well-intentioned crafters bringing them in might be carrying the virus?
Looking to the helpers was Mr. Rogers’ way of redirecting attention from despair to hope, from overwhelm and panic into action and progress. But it’s also just exactly what a wise, veteran minister or leader would say after seeing so much suffering to shepherd people through. Who’s already doing the work? Who already has systems and strategies and coalitions and networks? Who is asking and what are they asking for? How can I help and serve, not how can I make myself feel like a hero? Look and ask and follow before leaping into “helping.”
Fred Rogers was a Presbyterian, but in a moment of ecumenism he might have appreciated, I’ll add an Extremely Methodist Take for you.
You’ll often hear me say “Stop trying to ~manifest~ a miracle to save the world. You are the miracle!” I’m a social gospel Methodist always asking people to get up from begging for supernatural shows of power and divine interventions to BE the body of Christ in the world. It’s us! We’re the answer God has provided to the problem of pain! We are the divine intervention. But know that it is always with this context: root yourself in the Wesleyan quadrilateral first. “Tradition” aka, learn from the past and from those around you who’ve been doing it. Reason, aka, does it make sense in facts and data, is it actually what anyone needs or wants or is asking for? And the experience of the Spirit within you will remind you how far you’ve come and what’s been impossible made possible before you, and They will lead you forward, even when the odds seem against you and hope is scarce and the problem is too big for you or your group alone. We trust the Spirit of Love, higher than us, to work to bring us all together so each person or group’s contribution matters in a bigger picture we can’t see from here.
Look to the helpers in humility when you need help, in example when you need an education, and in leadership when you are ready to serve and join in to be a helper yourself, in any age, ability, skills, gift, contribution, or capacity you can bring to the work of collective liberation.
Every minute of every day That a person goes hungry That a hospital is bombed That slavery is and has been
That the planet is burning With hate and fear and pride But mostly as a sacrifice To the ravenous god Mammon Who demands a child die For each dollar it grants the wicked
You’re totally right. We should be unable to breathe To sleep, to have peace Until each war is ended forever
Until violence is mutinied And bullets no longer rain on the schools and churches And cities and countries
Until all are free from the demons In the legislature and in their minds In the pulpit and in their homes
You’re right. We are complicit. You’re right.
We live in abundance while others starve And freeze and lie ill or scream of anguish On our very streets
We pass by and we scroll on We can’t take another headline We ask in despair if anything matters And wonder that anyone has survived this long
This cruel planet, and its stupid inhabitants Destroying it as fast as possible In our worship to our golden god
You’re right. It should make us boil in rage. You’re right. We have no excuse to stay silent.
And our bodies are also right. We cannot take constant grief and rage. We are not built for this 24/7 world. We need rest and hope and humor
We need to hold so much in our hearts Not just the anger fire But the still waters Not just the injustice But praise of the good
The birds of the air And the palm trees that line my street Know something I don’t And they don’t know what I know
So I learn from their wisdom And ground myself to the earth That will be here long after we die Welcoming us back to the dirt
I can feel and do and be And speak from My full self Unashamed
Unwavering in righteous anger Rooted in peace within Committed to what is mine to do Rejoicing with those who rejoice Taking pleasure in the ephemeral and savoring transcendence
Holding in tension Multidimensional Loving and raging and fighting and calming Hosting and giving And resting and creating
So that my body, mind and heart Survive long enough to turn my grief Into a legacy.
There has yet to be peace on the Earth But don’t stop seeking Until it’s born.
This Enneagram 3 has been wrestling with “But is it enough to the world? Should I be doing more? Am I doing enough?” for many years.
Sarah Bessey asked these questions in a Substack post last week, and I wrote much of the following as an essay-length comment in response. At her encouragement, I am not being self-deprecating about my hyperverbal tendencies and am instead turning it into an actual essay here. 😊
Enoughness and too-muchness haunt me as I bounce between ADHD and anxiety, between disabilities and giftedness, between work-for-your-worthiness hustle culture and the fine line of comfort that tips necessary recovery-mode rest into self-indulgence and privilege. Am I achieving enough to have earned my belonging, my right to be treated with respect, my credibility when I speak on my own story, my rest? And then there are the less me-focused questions: Am I doing enough to steward my gifts for the needs of the world? Am I loving my neighbor or just talking about it online? Am I missing opportunities when I could have made a difference but didn’t see the need right in front of me, which I am uniquely gifted and called to fill?
For one example, there is work to be done around building the field of asexual theology as a subset of queer theology, and I know I could and maybe even “should” do it, but here at this point in time, I spend so much time managing my disorders and disabilities and general adulting that even reading and remembering a book feels like a daunting task, much less trying to be one of few pioneers in a niche and controversial subgenre of a subgenre. Maybe that will change! My containers and limits today might only be for a season. I can’t know.
And still the ambition is there: Maybe I will feel like I am making a difference if I just wrote a book or got a significant speaking gig or finally went to seminary, just as the leaders and mentors in my life have suspected I someday will. The Enneagram 3 in me knows I could be Someone Special, if I just tried harder, had the right master’s degree from the right school, started a podcast, networked with all the right people, had an impressive title, never said “no” ever, flew to all the conferences and namedropped and threw my resume and story around like currency. If tried to be everything shiny and powerful and impressive to everyone all of the time, maybe enoughness would find me.
Alas for the darn bounds of time and space that I have to live linearly, constrained to physics, for lack of a TARDIS.
But being Someone Special is not a magic solution for the enoughness. This is part of my twice-exceptional ADHD, anxiety, perfectionist, compulsive overachiever recovery plan: to live contained to what I can do and not what I should do. I know it sounds simple, like the first-day-of-therapy kind of basic. But I realized in 2024 that I wasn’t getting to bed late because of Revenge Bedtime Procrastination, in which one stays up late to extend their fun free time. I simply had too many things on my plate for a normal human to get done in a day, and I am not a “normal” human. I am an invisibly disabled one, just in small ways that add up, and not always obviously, even to myself. My brain and body are different than other people’s, in need of different and sometimes more time-consuming care or problem-solving. (In 2023, my Word of the Year was “Complicated, as in letting myself be.” And that was a huge theme. Very accurate for that year. Goodness.)
I know all the hustle culture currency, which we have been taught will buy love or respect, is just another lie of capitalism. So, as Kendra Adachi says, naming what matters to ME (and not to everyone’s expectations to live up to) is vital for survival.
Back to the good I could do in the world, which genuinely does need what I am uniquely gifted to share: My skills as an editor and former journalist can teach my friends and followers media literacy; my specific theology and knowledge as a queer asexual Methodist provides a rare perspective on de/reconstruction and advocacy training; my White middle-class privilege to boost a cause or raise awareness or speak until my voice is hoarse allows others to get what they need. But at what point do my gifts/abilities/skills and the world’s needs surpass my capacity, regardless of my fit-ness for the task and call to stewardship of all I’ve been given?
My local leaders of United Women in Faith, the UMC women’s organization, said their theme this year, is “No one can do everything, but we can all do something. Let’s see what we can do together.” It is essentially the same “my drop in the bucket” concept I’ve held like a lifeline: I can’t fill the whole bucket of the solution, but I can be one droplet that makes the bucket overflow with compassion and care for all.
So I know I can’t do everything, but am I doing enough, what’s expected of me, what I should be doing, what the world needs from me, what is my duty and responsibility to step up and do? One body, many parts, means I can’t be the whole body by myself, but as a body part, am I contributing my function to justify the gifts I’ve been given and meet the needs of those who need me to give them?
I tried so hard in 2024. I did what I could. And in some ways, it was never going to be enough, and learning that the hard way allowed me to discern “the difference” of the infamous prayer, between what is mine to change and what is mine to accept I cannot change. People like to edit this to “no longer accepting what I cannot change, but changing what I cannot accept” as if it makes any sense. With apologies to Angela Davis, often cited as the source of this quote, it doesn’t add up. The lesson of the container is learned in cracking it to pieces and the necessary repair work that follows. I cannot save the whole world and convert them to be Justice Warriors with my leftover Evangelical Hero Complex (vintage Sarah Bessey blog post throwback!). I can’t change the election outcome or my body’s neediness or hateful people who don’t want to do better and refuse to learn anything. But I can accept what is out of my control and still commit to live my values regardless of the circumstances. For another metaphor, if a brick wall is blocking my path, the only way forward is to start by accepting that the wall is immovable, but I am not. I can’t change the wall, but I can change direction in response to it. This is “the wisdom to know the difference.”
As Sarah wrote about, we must make peace with being contained, constrained, being CONtent/conTENT of a boundaried physics-abiding linear timestream with over a third of my 24 hours a day being paid work and another third being necessary sleep. We must trust it’s enough, we’re doing enough, we’re enough, or that we’ve equipped others enough that they can pick up the baton and start running for themselves. And maybe we build that community we want, not through earning admirers from hustling, impressing, or fulfilling obligations and duties with our own skills, but in encouraging, equipping, opening doors, and giving away our seat at the table to those who need to be heard and seen. And then, when we are refreshed and discerning wisely, we can jump back in with what IS ours to do.
Sarah also wrote of others demanding moremoremore, which can turn from an honor into a storm of expectations and duty and stewardship and performance and responsibility so fast. As Taylor Swift sings, “the crowd was chanting MORE” as she was falling apart and pretending to be on top of the world (“I Can Do It With a Broken Heart”). It is often a mistimed, misplaced, or misworded expression of gratitude.
I say this to all of you from hard-won experience: you are already enough. And you have the wisdom to determine your own course of action and capacity to give. Comparison and competition will not measure accurately, ever. Your worthiness and enoughness lie unshaken within you by any outside force or others’ assessment. You’re wanted and not forgotten, you’re important and belong, you’re respected and trusted, you’re so very deeply loved and appreciated, you’re effective and outstanding in your work. And often that work does hit exactly where your neighbors and loved ones have their own needs. And I sit with you all in that grief of discernment, priorities and values alignments, and adding and subtracting to your schedule, knowing that some of the “moremoremore!” cheeping baby birds will have to learn to fly and seek their need-meeting elsewhere because you cannot be everything to everyone all of the time, even if you’d be better at it than others or have been given unique gifts to do it. Sometimes that opens the door for someone else to be the one who steps up to help, and sometimes that learn-to-fly moment will be the realization the baby birds need to lead themselves. The “moremoremore” might be a chance for the crowd to grow into “I can too” and blossom into a community of support so you aren’t the lone pioneer in your area of expertise and giftings, just one necessary and interdependent part of a larger body.
Being involuntarily boundaried by our limitations is a grief. Don’t skip over that part. We must learn to lament.
And also. Healthy containers and constraints can lead to more diverse ecosystems and stronger, lasting growth. They will also help us get quiet and still enough to hear the whisper of the Spirit or nudge in a direction to go and love in ways we are uniquely called to, equipped for, gifted in, and given to delight in.
If I must live bounded in a container of energy, time, space, and ability, then let me be a garden, flourishing and resting and bearing fruit and contributing to the growth of others, each in its season.
I started this year with a specific Word of the Year, a tradition in Christian women’s circles dating back to the heyday of the “blogsphere.” I usually don’t remember mine by April, but this year was different. This year the word that came to me, or that I picked (depending on what you believe about such things), was “complicated.”
As in, letting myself be.
I refused to simplify myself any longer. I would not pretend to be straight for others’ comfort. I would not pretend to be the perfect gold-star aromantic asexual person while denying the reality of my vague sapphic attractions, while accepting that I would never be fully accepted in the lesbian community either. Aromantic and yet a romantic. A cis woman and yet deeply, intrinsically, queerly, asexually so.
I would not hide that I have nontraditionally presenting ADHD in addition to my variety pack of mental illnesses. I would give up trying to screen and test myself over and over for autism, which I probably don’t actually have but also don’t not have entirely. I would be hyperactive and exhausted, both wrapped in brain fog and begging for someone quick enough to catch up with my twice-exceptional brain that has already put the pieces together. I would live into the reality of my disabilities despite feeling unqualified to use that term. I would respect my body’s needs and differences as my own and not the object of others’ expectations.
Swinging in the twilight
Summer sun cools to breezes
Vanilla ice cream—
From little plastic cups with wood spoons—
Dripped on concrete
Sticky memorial to innocence
Street lights come on
And junebugs play
As Dad laughs and Mom chats with the neighbors.
Remember
This was us once
I’ve been marveling a little at how far we’ve come in our lifetimes. There’s so much queer content now, not just coded but stated clearly, that it’s a major party platform to ban it.
That entire religious denominations are splitting in half (half with us!) and have to go to extreme financial and legal lengths to fight against us. City councils and school boards have allies at them, vocal and not anonymous! Support is so high that the haters have to resort to coordinated campaigns and recycle their fear-mongering and dig out Anita Bryant’s old catchphrases to make Florida the leader in hate again instead of just taking it for granted that we are society’s undesirables.
As you might assume from my content on this site, I carry a lot of labels. Some are less well-known than others, and some carry inaccurate connotations. Some I am constantly working for greater awareness of, and others I keep quieter about. These labels have been immensely helpful for me, whether they are as specific as a microlabel on the spectrum of aromantic and asexual identity or as broad as the unifying and nebulous umbrella terms that I’m not sure where all I fit within.
Naming is important to self-concept and acceptance of our identity, but there are equally important stages that we move through before and after we first say, “Hi, my name is ____ and I’m ____.” These aren’t strictly linear, but they are numbered for the sake of organization:
Today, Sarah Bessey asked her readers on her Substack about all the losses that come with deconstruction/faith evolution. It made me think of a related, often simultaneous loss when that deconstruction is part of coming out as queer:
There’s something I tell queer people when they come out and lose so much (or publicly identify as allies). Yes, you will lose belonging and comfort. Maybe your job, church, friends, family, sense of stable identity, certainty, easy acceptance into your communities, even safety. But by being vulnerable, that courage opens many doors as well. You are not alone in this. You are welcome to grieve together with others who have lost the same. You are now part of a free, inclusive, authentic family. It is so so so painful, and there is so much to mourn and lament in the rage and tears. No, it isn’t fair. Yes, it would have hurt so much less if people saw and loved the full, real you.
Invisible Cake Society 