God and I can only partner in any useful way in the real world, and the reality is that the real world often makes me uncomfortable.

I’ve certainly done my share of damage by shying away from my own discomfort. Back in the early nineties when I was first climbing out of addiction, I ran a railroad crew hotel for about a year. It was the last remaining business in a once-thriving town. At the time, I was filled with the desire to save people as I, myself, had been saved—filled with it to the point of omnipotence. I was certain that I, because of my own experience, could do for other drunks what they could not do for themselves.

Bud was in his seventies, a legendary binge drinker who lived in a derelict store down the tracks from the hotel—or, at least, he lived there whenever he wasn’t on a bender and among the disappeared. I’m naturally friendly, as is my husband. Bud took to hanging around the hotel’s restaurant whenever he was sober. Either Charlie, my husband, or I would give him a bowl of beans and we’d talk. One day Bud took us down to the derelict store, showed us around and told us stories of railroading in its glory days. Another time he took us back in the woods and showed us a ratty old armchair in which he liked to sit. It made my heart hurt to think of this sweet old man surviving in such squalor. I felt a burning need to help him and a luxurious certainty that I knew what kind of help would bring him back into the comfortable folds of mainstream life.

Alas, poor Bud, he became my project, for in those green days of faith, I was still not comfortable shouldering my own discomfort with reality. I still believed that “doing good” relied heavily on doing, and I usually did whatever made me feel the most comfortable.

Bud took to coming in regularly late at night and sweeping out the restaurant. I fussed and made much over his efforts, which pleased him. When this had gone on for a while, I decided here was my chance to make Bud’s life better, and so I offered to turn the old man’s voluntary sweeping into a paying job. All Bud had to do was to commit to keep doing what he was already doing, and I would pay him minimum wage and all the beans—or whatever else we served—that he could eat.

Bud went on a bender that lasted a week, stopped all sweeping, and I think was never again quite as comfortable around me or in the restaurant. Now, I’m not arrogant enough to think I caused that particular bender—Bud is as responsible for dealing with his addiction as I am for dealing with mine. But I did put him under intolerable pressure in trying to avoid my own discomfort with his situation.

Since then, I think I’ve grown into a faith that at least lets me identify my own discomfort for what it is. I can now see that I should have just kept on thanking Bud for his sweeping, and kept on chatting with him over those bowls of beans. If Bud thought he should be paid for his work, I should have allowed him the dignity of saying so. My explanation (not, by any means, my excuse) for my well-meant job-offer is that I was newly sober, newly faithful, and not yet accepting of the discomfort inevitably caused by working in partnership with God.