Using My Resources

 In Cultural Diversity class this semester, we talked about handling culture shock.  One of the things I learned was that it’s important to use available resources for support and help.  This involves humbling yourself and acknowledging that while you want to minister to others, you have a lot that you can learn from others as well.  This week, I have been reminding myself to use the resources around me, which has been humbling but has also allowed me to start building relationships with the people around me.  

I keenly sensed my own inadequacy, and a real need for help on Tuesday while attempting to assemble a bed.  It was from Amazon, and was one of those build-it-yourself things that arrives in dozens of pieces.  You know what I’m talking about — the kind of furniture that comes with a picture-book instruction manual that should be readable by a child, but really requires a peep stone or six months of language school to use (Satterfield, Text-Messages and Heresy, 11).  

I started in with a false sense of confidence in my abilities.  After two Odyssey episodes, I was still sitting on my floor staring at this mess and wondering why the first step was so difficult.  I did NOT want to ask for help, but once I dissolved into tears, I realized that God gave us people for a reason.  I first texted a professor for moral support (shout-out to Professor JField!), and then texted someone local to ask for support.  Within the hour, help had arrived and my bed was completely set up.  I’m learning to use my resources, and I’m building friendships in the process.  

Here’s the finished product.  Please appreciate the teddy bear.

I learned again to ask for help on Thursday when I found a couch online.  I have a small SUV and definitely couldn’t transport the thing by myself, and in addition, I wasn’t going to be able to lift it upstairs on my own.  So I called a lady in the area, who told me to ask for help if I needed it.  That evening, her husband and sons met me to pick up the couch and got it perfectly situated at my house.  Tada!

Today was another opportunity for me to practice using my resources, in a task that involved both asking for help and using other resources to learn how to do it myself. 

The task?  Change the belt on a vacuum.  The complication?  ... the whole thing.  That whole thing was a complication.  

My first task was simply getting the cover off.  After fifteen or twenty minutes of trying that, my appreciation for Victor Sanders’ maintenance abilities had multiplied exponentially.  As I thought of that, I realized that while he couldn’t come fix it for me, he was still a resource from which I could gain knowledge.  After a short call with Bro. Sanders, I had the vacuum disassembled.  Now the question was, where is the belt supposed to go?  After another frustrating twenty minutes of trial-and-error, my mom walked into the room, and advised me in a sensible way:  “Why don’t you stop and pray for wisdom?”

Humbling that she had to remind me that I have the resource of praying to a loving Heavenly Father.

So I did, and then after some google searches and wrangling the vacuum (if you’ve never tried to work on the bottom of a vacuum, you can’t understand what I mean by wrangle, but truly there is no better word to describe it), discovered where the belt was supposed to go.

Now came the interesting part:  

I had to stretch that little rubber belt-thing double its length, all the way back to the little metal thing sticking out of the motor (I don’t actually know if that’s the motor, but I just guessed.  If it wasn’t before, it is now).  With great care, my mother’s cheerleading, and also much fear and trembling that the strong band would snap off at me, I was finally able to accomplish the task.  

Honestly think it’s my most proud moment of my life so far.  I know I have two bachelor degrees, but I fixed a vacuum!  What could be more exciting?

So I’m learning to use my resources.  Sometimes those resources are YouTube videos.  Sometimes the resources are people that I’m learning to be vulnerable with here as I build relationships.  Sometimes the resources are people that I know from other places that can’t run to my aid but can support me as I face these new challenges.  And always, I have the resource of prayer, and access to a Father who knows each of my needs before I even ask.