Franklin Elliot was a pastor, teacher, mentor and friend to me. He was the pastor of the church in which Susan grew up. It was the church I joined, for obvious reasons, when I went to college. Frank was the counselor in the cabin in which I spent my first week of church camp as a youth independent from my family. We had attended family camp for years and I had looked forward for some time to being old enough to go to camp by myself and Frank’s gentle ways were key to the success of that experience for me. Both Susan and I name Frank as one of the reasons we ended up in theological seminary and became pastors.

Frank was a thoughtful and careful preacher and his sermons appealed to the educated congregation he served. He knew how to prepare a sermon that would engage college professors and theology geeks. He had a tendency to be a bit long-winded and sometimes boring, but he was careful and accurate in his choice of words. As a pastor, however, he excelled and there was no better model for the ministry that we pursued during our careers.

Frank didn’t provide a model of retirement for me. He retired just 60 miles from the church he had served for decades in a nearby resort town where he often saw the members of that church. He and his wife had their retirement home built out of logs. Frank, however, was no builder. He wasn’t a plumber or electrician or cabinet maker. As a result he hired all of the work on the cabin. The cost of the modest building soared above the estimates. The location of their retirement was a town with a lot of snow and he didn’t have the right vehicle for the conditions. There were lots of stresses in retirement for Frank and they may have contributed to the heart attack that he survived and to the one that he did not. From our point of view, Frank died too soon. There was still a lot that he had to offer to the world. Even though it is now decades later, there are days when I miss Frank and his calm and accurate observations about the world and the life of a religious person.

One of the quotes from Frank that both Susan and I remember went something like this: “If you’re going to do something for someone, you have to first figure out a way for them to forgive you.” Frank understood that a hand out isn’t always the best way to build a relationship. You can rob a person of a great deal of autonomy and freedom by making their choices for them under the guise of charity.

Over the years, I’ve seen Frank’s wisdom illustrated in a wide variety of settings. Teachers and other adults noticed that children were arriving at school hungry and they devised a number of programs to feed children. It was a kind and sensible thing to do. When children are well fed thy are better able to learn. In the process, they not only removed some responsibility from parents and other family members, they also began to make the choice about what the children ate. Over the years, in some settings, the essential task of every parent, to feed and nurture your offspring was assumed by institutions. Traditions of cooking and preparing food were not passed from one generation to the next. Children grew up without knowing the foods that had sustained generations of their people. Their culture was lost in the well-intentioned attempt to address hunger. We simply didn’t realize that when we fed children we were taking their culture and heritage away from them.

Another, perhaps more obvious example: I knew a family that was often struggling to make ends meet. As a way of supporting them, other family members purchased a set of living room furniture for their home. In doing so, the donors made the selection of what furniture, including the colors and fabrics, would be a part of their home. Resentment built over the gift. While the recipients wanted to be grateful for the gift, they felt like they lost something essential in not being able to choose the furniture in their own home. “I’ve never liked that couch!” was something that I heard when visiting the home.

Or there is the situation of a retired couple for whom a loving relative hired a service to take care of some of their home maintenance chores. It infuriated the couple. The person making the gift reported that the recipient was the angriest she had ever encountered. She yelled about having her freedom and independence taken away. She ranted about how they were proud of being able to take care of their own needs. She cried about how it made her feel old and incapacitated.

Frank was right. “If you’re going to do something for someone, you have to first figure out a way for them to forgive you.”

Over the years, I have frequently encountered gracious and well-meaning people who struggle to figure out how to help others. They genuinely want to do the right thing, but don’t know how to do it. Sometimes I’ve baffled them by asking them to wait instead of acting. They are doers, who are used to pitching in and getting a job done. They know how to solve problems. They enjoy challenges. But generally those same people enjoy being in charge and don’t want to have the work proceed at someone else’s pace or in someone else’s way. Sometimes it just isn’t our role to decide what someone else needs. We have to wait for them to tell us what we can do to be helpful. And while we are waiting, we have to earn their trust so that they will be able to tell us.

It helps to remember that an act of giving can also be an act of taking. Give too much or in the wrong way and you take away independence and choice. We often are imperfect in our giving. Sometimes we simply need to be able to ask for forgiveness. Sometimes we have to figure out a way for another to forgive us. Relationships are complex and even after decades of experience, we are still trying to figure them out.