Doormat or Ladder
There is a peculiar weariness that comes from loving people!
It is not the weariness of busyness or overwork, but of discovering that relationships rarely remain as simple as we imagine them to be. We enter them hoping to give and receive, yet over time we begin to notice that every one of us carries needs we cannot satisfy ourselves. We look to one another for encouragement, understanding, opportunity, forgiveness, companionship and hope. There is nothing unusual about this; it is simply part of being human.
The difficulty is that our need is seldom content to remain need.
Left unchecked, it becomes expectation.
We begin drawing from one another without noticing the cost. We lean a little more heavily than we realise. We receive another person's time, attention or emotional strength as though it were quietly available to us. Rarely is this done with malice. More often it is simply the unnoticed consequence of living with hearts that are instinctively bent in upon ourselves.
If this is true, then there is little point in being surprised when we find ourselves on the receiving end of it. Most of us, sooner or later, know what it is like to become useful. We become the dependable friend, the patient listener, the person who always makes room for everyone else. There is joy in that kind of generosity, but there can also be loneliness. Eventually there comes a day when we need someone ourselves, and the silence that follows is often more revealing than we expected.
The temptation is not merely to feel hurt. It is to become different people. We begin protecting ourselves with careful calculations about what we owe others and what they owe us. We offer less of ourselves, not because we have ceased to care, but because disappointment slowly convinces us that generosity is rarely worth its cost. What first appears to be wisdom can quietly become cynicism.
Perhaps this is why I find myself repeatedly returning to the upper room with Jesus.
On the night before His death, He knelt to wash His disciples' feet. It is difficult to imagine a more ordinary act. He did not offer them a theory of love or a strategy for changing the world. He simply took upon Himself the dust they had carried in from the road. What makes the scene remarkable is not merely the humility of the act, but the people before whom He knelt. Before the evening was over, one would betray Him, another would deny Him, and the rest would leave Him to face the night alone. Yet none of that prevented Him from loving them.
Perhaps that is what has stayed with me.
Not the washing of feet itself, but the refusal to allow another person's frailty to determine the condition of His own heart.
That thought has made me look differently at two rather ordinary objects.
A doormat and a ladder.
Neither escapes another person's weight. Both are stepped upon. Yet one quietly bears the dust that others carry, while the other bears their weight so they can reach somewhere they could never have reached alone. Neither exists to be admired. Both simply make someone else's journey possible.
I still believe in wisdom. I still believe in boundaries. But I wonder whether there is a difference between protecting our lives and protecting our hearts. One may be necessary; the other can slowly diminish our capacity to love.
Perhaps the question is not whether people will sometimes take more from us than they should. That seems to be one of the unavoidable features of life together.
Perhaps the deeper question is whether we will allow those disappointments to decide the kind of people we become.For in the end, the greatest freedom may not be found in avoiding the weight of others, but in choosing, even then, what our lives will become for them.
Perhaps that is what Jesus meant when he said: