Rescue v. helping

Are you helping or rescuing?
It is sometimes difficult to realize when the line has been crossed, especially with loved ones. However, always stepping in and cleaning up the mistakes our children make is destructive rescuing. Certainly at times it is appropriate to help a bit – as long as in the process our help does not keep the one helped from acquiring a valuable tool of independence.
As a parent it is extremely easy to fall into the rescuing mode and to empty my purse out for the ones I love. My adult child reminded me of that reality the day they refused my offer of funds during a crisis, “I think we need to work this one out ourselves.”
I was mighty proud to have raised such a child that day. Their refusal did not instantaneously take care of their financial difficulties, but it did mean they chose to help themselves by buckling their belt a little tighter and making do with what they had.
Obviously sometimes rescuing is necessary and appropriate. A severely mentally ill person can not think clearly enough during the worst of their illness to even know they need to do something. At that point, rescuing can be helpful if, once they are stabilized on medication, the individual is taught how to manage the illness to keep them functioning as much as possible in society. The National Alliance for the Mentally Ill does just that through support groups, classes and information all with the goal of helping to improve the lot of the severely mentally ill and their families.
The question of helping or rescuing came to mind when an acquaintance told me about a young family who knocked at their door asking for funds to buy disposable diapers for their baby. The petitioned wondered, “Why don’t they use washable cloth diapers like I did?” The question delineates the difference. Rescuing is purchasing a one use expendable item. Helping is purchasing a couple dozen cloth diapers, a box of baby detergent and a scrub brush and bucket. It is not the most glamorous of solutions but it worked for our mothers and grandmothers – and it would provide what is needed until the child matures.
When we encounter a poor family living in a wreck of a home, the inclination is to get them out of the shack and into something decent. That solution lead to the urban blight of the projects. Habitat for Humanity provides a better way by instilling pride in ownership by requiring the family to establish substantial sweat equity by helping build other families’ homes and then their own during weekend house raising parties. Habitat for Humanity does not rescue, it helps.
Finances frequently are the primary focus of the question, “Are you helping or rescuing?” With shopping centers and malls filled with thousands of have-to-have-items and the ease of assuming astronomical credit debt, many families struggle to stay afloat financially. The late Larry Burkett established Christian Financial Ministries to help families out of the morass of their indebtedness by teaching them to set up a working budget to get them out of debt and establish a lifestyle enabling them to stay financially ahead. Certainly it would be easier to step in and write a check, but that is rescuing. In the long run, it is better to help families to learn to live within their means, redefine their goals and rethink what is a necessity.
Helping usually takes more time than rescuing but the resultant change remains throughout the rest of their life.
(Joan Hershberger is a reporter at the News-Times.)