What my Couples group, my Men's group, and a small army of strangers taught me about asking for help
There's been a lot of ugly talk online lately about Servolution Network and the people who volunteer with them. I'll get to that. But before I do, I want to tell you about the people who actually showed up at my place, because that's the part nobody arguing on the internet actually saw.
The tornado nobody's forgotten
If you're anywhere around Springtown, you already know. The tornado came through months ago and it's still visible if you know where to look. Blue tarps that never got replaced. Trees snapped off at odd angles like something took a bite out of them. Piles that used to be somebody's shed or somebody's fence line.
At our place, we lost the barn. Buried it, really, under its own roof and a mountain of debris. We also lost our truck, which we'd parked inside the barn thinking that was the smart move, the safe move, the “at least the truck won't get hail damage” move. It didn't get hail damage. It got a barn dropped on it instead. There's a lesson in there somewhere about the things we do to protect what we love, and how none of us can actually see the storm coming.
The part where I refused to ask for help
Here's something you should know about me. I've spent my whole life trying to make my own way. Fix my own stuff. Carry my own weight. Somewhere along the line I decided that needing help was basically the same thing as failing, and I built a lot of my identity around never having to find out if that was true.
So when the barn came down, I didn't ask anybody for anything. My wife Carrie and I, we just went to work. And let me say something about Carrie right here, because she deserves it. She is the hardest working woman I have ever known in my life. Mostly we just try to help where we can and keep our own heads above water, and somehow it never occurred to either of us that maybe we needed to be on the receiving end of a little help too.
It caught up with me. Not all at once, but slow, the way exhaustion does. I could feel myself getting worse mentally, watching that barn sit there buried, knowing the tractor transmission was shot too, knowing I couldn't do it alone but telling myself I had to anyway. It was too much. It was too much for both of us, honestly.
A friend who wouldn't let it slide
Last week at church, a good friend of mine looked me dead in the eye and said something like, “You need to ask for help. We are all here for you if you need it.”
I didn't have a comeback for that. I just sat with it.
The next day I woke up and something had shifted. I talked it over with Carrie, and I swallowed my pride, which if you know me, tastes about as good as it sounds, and I posted in our Couples group, part of The Church at Azle, asking for help.
My Couples group family
Things exploded. In the best way.
People I've sat across from on Monday evenings and prayed with on hard nights started answering back within minutes. What do you need. When. How many hands. What should we bring. This is a group of people I already loved, but there's a difference between loving people at church on a Monday night and watching them rearrange their whole Saturday for you. That's the difference I felt sitting there reading those responses. Looking back, I keep thinking about Galatians 6:2. Carry each other's burdens. I'm no Bible scholar, but that one's simple enough for anybody to understand. I've mostly just tried to keep my own head above water and help where I could along the way. It never crossed my mind that somebody might want to help carry mine too. My Couples group didn't just understand that verse. They lived it out on my property.
Then the Men's group jumped in too
One of the guys asked if he could post it in the Men's group as well, the same Church at Azle family just a different room on a different night. He did, and it happened all over again. Trucks got offered. Trailers got offered. Guys I mostly know from Saturday morning coffee and the occasional work project started calling me all week, some with questions about logistics, most just to say, in one way or another, “It's about time you asked.” There's a particular kind of love that shows up as a phone call from a man who doesn't say much normally, just checking in, just making sure you're covered. I got a lot of those calls that week, and I'm not going to pretend they didn't get to me.
And then the circle got even wider
My brother in the faith, Jason, who's connected with the Servolution Network, caught wind of what was going on and did not hold back. He mobilized tractors. He mobilized trailers. He started making calls I didn't even know needed to be made, reaching well past our own church walls. I was bracing myself to spend the week playing project manager for my own disaster, and instead all I had to do was show up and put my gloves on.
And I want to be clear about something. I'm definitely not the only one they've helped. Servolution is out there all the time doing this for other families, families whose names I'll never know and whose Saturdays I'll never see. That's what God's people do. They don't wait for a headline or a thank-you post. They just keep showing up, over and over, for people who never asked to need them.
Some of the criticism I've seen online about Servolution says their volunteers come with shady pasts. Recovering alcoholics. People who've had run-ins with the law. Past drug addicts. Said like it's supposed to be a knock against them.
I'll take those people any day of the week. I love all of them. Honestly, I don't know how you call yourself a Christian and use “questionable past” as an insult. Jesus didn't exactly run with the polished crowd. Matthew 9 tells it plain, he sat down to eat with a house full of tax collectors and sinners, and when the religious crowd asked his disciples why their teacher would eat with people like that, Jesus answered them himself. It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. And most of all, he loved them. Not despite the rough resume. Just loved them, full stop. If the son of God wasn't too good to sit at that table, I'm not sure who any of us think we are to turn our nose up at the people who showed up to dig through my debris pile.
Pastor Mike preached on this very thing this weekend, pointing back to 1 Corinthians 13. Love is patient, love is kind. Faith, hope, and love remain, these three, but the greatest of these is love. I saw that verse in action before I ever heard him preach it.
Saturday, 8:00 AM sharp
The workday was set for Saturday. I was up at 7:30, half nervous, half not knowing what to expect. People were supposed to start arriving at 8.
You know that scene in every western, every disaster movie, every story where the cavalry shows up right when you need them. There's a low rumble first, so low you feel it before you hear it. Then somebody spots the dust rising on the horizon, and it just keeps rising, closer and closer, until whatever's kicking it up finally comes into view. That's exactly what 8:00 felt like. One second it was quiet. The next, the rumble hit, the dust came rolling up my road, and then the blessing just busted wide open on my property. My Couples group. My Men's group. Servolution volunteers. And people I'd never met before in my life, some of them fulfilling community service hours, working just as hard and just as cheerfully as everybody who already knew my name. Trucks and tractors and gloves, all at once, like somebody flipped a switch. Nobody stood around making small talk. They just went straight to the pile.
It was awesome in the old sense of that word, the sense we don't use much anymore. Like God showed up awesome. Hebrews 13:2 says not to forget to show hospitality to strangers, because some who have done so have entertained angels without knowing it. I'm not saying I had angels in my yard Saturday. I'm saying I understand that verse a whole lot better than I did before. It was all I could do not to stand there and bawl the whole day. Honestly, thinking about it right now while I write this, I'm getting choked up again.
Why I'm writing this
Mostly I just wanted to say thank you, out loud, where people could see it.
Thank you to my Couples group, who carried us the second we finally let them know we needed carrying. Thank you to my Men's group, who showed up loud and generous and didn't waste a minute doing it. Thank you to my whole church family at The Church at Azle, for being the kind of place where a man can finally admit he's drowning and get met with open arms instead of judgment.
And thank you to Servolution Network, to my brother Jason and everybody he brought with him, for widening the circle further than I ever expected, with people who drove in from all over and didn't ask for a thing in return. Jason and Ryan ramrodded the whole operation so I didn't have to. My job was just to show up and work alongside people who love their neighbors better than I've ever managed to love mine.
I'm not writing this to pick a fight with anybody who's had a bad experience with Servolution or a real grievance against them. I don't know the whole story behind every complaint I've seen online about the organization, and I'm not claiming to.
Carrie and I are forever grateful. To our Couples group, our Men's group, our whole church family, and yes, to Servolution Network too. You are our family. You show up, and you don't stay in your lane to do it.
And for all of you out there with negative things to say about Servolution, and maybe even about Christians in general, I want you to know something. You are still loved. Not just by us, but most importantly by the Most High God. That's not a line, that's just true.
God bless everyone, and thank you.
