No Good Deed

The timing was not the greatest in the world, as is so often the case with acts of mercy.

A pastor friend of mine was approached by a retired schoolteacher in his congregation. She had hired a man to do major renovations on her home, given him most of the money he needed to do that, and left on a long trip. She came home to find the man gone, the money gone, and the work undone.

The pastor contacted a mutual friend of ours whose considerable skills suited the job, asking him to step in and do as much of the originally requested work as possible, at the lowest cost possible. To do it as a kindness to an older woman in need.

It was a complicated request, for several reasons. My friend had a fulltime job already, so saying “yes” would mean doing or supervising the work needed around and between or before or after the usual daily projects. And the woman had quite a lot she wanted done.

Plus, there was no guarantee she’d be overly appreciative. Like my pastor friend, she is black, while the contractor who had taken her money was white. Sadly, his theft and betrayal of her trust were apparently of a piece with many of her experiences with whites over the years. She made it pretty clear that now she expected to be mistreated once again, and would be watching – hovering, really – over the job site to ensure that no more white men took advantage of her.

Despite all of that, my contractor friend agreed to take on the work, as an act of Christian charity. He would enlist his best workers to help, and persuade them to accept as little pay as possible for their efforts. They wanted to help a poor old lady. And to restore some respect for the integrity of their profession.

Things … didn’t go well. Like every renovation project since the beginning of time, this one grew more complicated by the moment. It took more hours than anticipated and more days than allotted, stretching late into evenings and long into weekends.

And, the woman herself made it harder in many ways. Nothing looked quite right. Everything seemed way too expensive. Many a change of her wary, edgy mind. Every item ordered was the wrong size or shade, every task took too long, every worker seemed to irritate or offend a spirit primed for outrage and eager to denounce slights real or imagined.

It got old. The holidays were coming on. The days were getting shorter, and colder. The woman grew, if anything, crankier. My friend endured her relentless inquisitions … defended his beleaguered workers … talked her with faltering patience through the wisdom of their decisions and the accuracy of their figures. Showdowns came and went.

It’s hard for a wounded woman to trust strange men, especially with her money and her home. Just as hard for tired, honest men to have their hard work negated and their generous motives shrilly questioned, day after day.

At length – and to a deep, collective sigh of relief – the job was done.

The following Sunday, my pastor friend looked up from a conversation in the foyer of his church to see the older lady waving at him. Unable to extricate himself from his current confab, he offered her a hopeful thumbs-up: “Everything okay?”

She shrugged two non-committal shoulders. Then, silently, gently, clenched her hands to her heart. Her throat grew tight.

“But that man,” she said, naming my friend. And her eyes overflowed, the tears sliding down the creases of her face. She just kept saying his name, softly, her face suffused in wonder.

She had found an honest man, she said. And a white one, to boot.

Tears slid down my pastor friend’s face, too, later, as he told me of that moment.

“You know,” he said, “if anything changes what’s happening between the races in our country, it will be people like our friend.”

“Just him being him,” I said, grinning.

“No,” the pastor said. “Just him being Jesus.”

A day or two later, I saw my friend. Asked if he’d talked with the pastor recently. He hadn’t. I asked how his charity project was going.

He sighed. Rolled his eyes. Sighed again. It wasn’t the right question. The week before, the work had finished with the biggest showdown yet, he said. He shared some of the older woman’s demands, and his frustrations at trying to wrap things up with her on a positive note. He almost shuddered with relief that the work was over, and could only guess what terrible word-of-mouth the angry lady would undoubtedly spread about him and his team.

The whole experience had clearly left a bad taste in his mouth.

I smiled.

“Why?” he asked. “What have you heard?”

What a grand thing, if we could always know what impressions we’ve left on those we’ve tried to help. Or – maybe not. Undoubtedly, some of our best and sincerest efforts have fallen like pearls before swine … unappreciated, misunderstood.

But then, what if at least some of our well-meaning overtures have indeed accomplished good? What if we left, unknowing, in the dust behind us, some small, resilient seeds that are growing, back there, in beautiful ways we can hardly imagine?

Here’s to stubborn kindness. And the possibilities …