Uncontrollable Faithfulness

A lot of us love The Lord of the Rings.  The movies.  The books.  Both.  And one of the weird things about The Lord of the Rings is how many characters it has.  How many stories.  How many important characters with individual journeys and agendas.  Game of Thrones, in being the dark or anti-Tolkien has the same thing going on.  (Of course, John Piper says if you watch GofT, with its nude scenes, it follows that you don't care about the souls of naked people, and in doing so, you recrucify Jesus.  I don't know about all that.)

   But, who's your favourite Lord of the Rings character?  A lot of people like Aragorn best of all.  Because he's the action hero.  Because he's like Jesus.  With the sword and the shouted speeches from horseback.  With the nobility and sensitive soul.  And Gandalf is fun too.  Grouch and beard and fumbling his way through things, never telling the whole truth.

   I went and heard Sean Astin speak in Ottawa last month, and it made me think about how, for some people, Sam is the best character.  Because he's faithful.  He's not the strongest, the smartest, the best warrior, or anything like that.  He's just there. Always. The whole way. And that makes him a lot of people's favourite.

   I've liked a lot of different women of different kinds in my time, and a female friend of mine recently said it was a really good thing none of them chose to go the distance with me, because none of them were right for me, and if any one of them had stuck with me, just for her staying I'd never have left her, no matter what she did. Because it's not in me.  Just like I would never have left my church, back in the day, no matter what.  They had to kick me out and refuse repeated attempts on my part to get back in.  And they're still not satisfied they're sufficiently rid of me.  I don't want back in, but I'm not done talking to people who will talk to me.

   And all of this stuff reminded me today of various abused wives who've confided in me over the years.  I still know some.  I note how their husbands can be alcoholics, or drug users, manipulative, abusive deadbeats, but these women somehow really just can't leave, because it's simply not in their nature to walk away from someone.  Ever.  It's not an option for them, even if their very lives are in jeopardy.

   Even with my cars, I have done ridiculous things to try to keep a beloved old car on the road.  Wasted endless time and money keeping a zombie car going.  When I was about 18, my dad said he wasn't going to bother to fix up "my" car one more time.  Now, I loved that car.  It had driven me safely away from school and church when I needed to escape those.  And then it always drove me back when I was ready, each time.  But Dad said it "wasn't worth fixing."  It was old and damaged.  More than fifteen years old.  Done.  Bad on gas. Out of style.  Useless.

   I  was about to go to University, and so had signed up to owe lots of money for a long time, not spend it on anything car-related.  But I got really angry, and was determined that some way or other, I was just going to somehow keep that beloved big, black car on the road.  I just couldn't face losing it.   Not even if there was eventually going to be another big black car to replace it. We had way too much history.
   In fact, I went out the door in a huff, to just drive that car (faulty brakes, failing emissions, bad steering, broken fuel gauge).  To drive it anywhere.  I hopped into it, and aggressively backed it around to drive out of the driveway.  I was taking charge.  Going to be an adult about this.  And I hit a tree.  I dented in a rear fender, while I was so dramatically swinging the car around.  (Our property has always had loitering crowds of trees just standing around, any of whom are apt to wander off and possibly stand right where you can run into them.)  And when the back part of my car caved in a bit, something broke in my resolve. I knew that now I had one more thing to fix on that car, that I couldn't fix.  And that I would never be able to fix it.  That I could make it worse but not better.  And it killed me. To give up on that car. I still wish I had that car.

   And years later when an important part flew out of my engine when driving home and crossing from Pennsylvania into New York State, my dad told me over my chunky Nokia cell phone to scrap that big black car too.  Instead, once I rented a (little blue) car and got back home, a few days later I rented a U-Haul truck, drove back down to just south of Binghamton and towed that car all the way back home to Canada, hoping to be able to fix it.  In the end, all that was time and money wasted, because I never did manage to get anything together to fix that car, as it needed a whole new engine.  But I couldn't just leave it.

    I'm like that about people, I think.  My friend Bethany is like that too.  It's not really in her nature to walk away from someone.  And before a friend of mine said that about me and my fortunately faithless exes, it had never occurred to me that I was a "faithful" person myself, especially in bad ways.  Ways that made me weak, and which limited my options.  Faithfulness bordering on obsession.

   And then I realized where I got this from.  My Mom.  Hates change.  Would never leave someone or something no matter what was done to her.  My dad is the only one of his three brothers who didn't end up getting divorced by his wife.  His father got divorced too.  Because we Moores are eminently divorceable.  But my dad's got my mom.  And my mom doesn't quit on people.  Just doesn't.  It's a virtue.  But she also can't.

   She's found herself walking out of a Brethren group, permanently, twice in the last decade or so.  Because of Dad.  If it weren't for him sighing heavily, snapping his bible shut, getting up and walking out, because eventually enough's enough, she would never have done it, not matter what she felt about what was going on.  Would never be able to.  So this time, she just sat there for a bit, then got up and followed his wide back out the door and they've never gone back.  And she seems to be delighted to be free, now.  Ecstatic.  A burden lifted from her, a series of weekly obligations and package of social censorships gone.  Not that she could have freed herself.

   It's like that "eff this" mode that my friend Bill once told me I clearly don't have.  My mom doesn't have that either.  I'm trying to have it.  Like a safety valve.  Making it possible for me to give up on something, sometimes.  Perhaps with the understanding that I'm kind of relentlessly going to keep at most things, only later, once I've had time to regroup.  If I stop talking to someone, I always intend to start up again.  If I walk out of a room, I always intend to walk back into it. I think it's okay to leave if you're going to come back.  If you're going to periodically check and see if coming back could work. I don't believe in giving up on people.  Which is handy, because I can't. I just rejoined a Facebook group I was tired of arguing with people on, because someone with a high ethical standard suggested that I can't really speak out against church division, and then do the same thing on the Internet. And I feel better for having rejoined it, even though I really don't want to argue with those guys.  You know: the ones who strain at a gnat and swallow camels whole.  The obsessive guys.  The ones like me.

   Sometimes this obsessive trait leads me into Mordor, I suppose.  "Simply walk"ing into it.  I'm sure the unflagging relentlessness, and the failure to say "oh, eff this, then!" about kids in my classes trying to get out of work, drives my students and bosses nuts.  So I guess I should think about it a bit.  It's not how normal people function.