Banker's Hours

I have been thinking about relationships today, and, oddly enough, Heleman 5:16 in the B.O.M. came to mind:

“And now, my sons, remember, remember that it is upon the rock of our Redeemer, who is Christ, the Son of God, that ye must build your foundation; that when the devil shall send forth his mighty winds, yea, his shafts in the whirlwind, yea, when all his hail and his mighty storm shall beat upon you, it shall have no power over you to drag you down to the gulf of misery and endless wo, because of the rock upon which ye are built, which is a sure foundation, a foundation whereon if men build they cannot fall.”

To me, this passage is one of the most beautiful and insightful in the Book of Mormon.  I think the imagery of the Savior and how his atonement affects our lives in the midst of disaster can also be applied to a host of other earthly circumstances, including our relationships with family and friends. 

Today, I have not thought much about the good times.

Instead, I removed the rose-colored glasses and thought about some of the rotten ones.

The relationship storms. 

The thunderclouds that overshadow the seamless blue sky of our niceties and place us at odds with our loved ones.

The disagreements. 

The arguments 

The grudges.

The mighty winds.

The shafts in the whirlwind.

I suspect that these and other types of relationship rumbles were high on Heleman’s list of things that, if we let them, could peel us back from the rock of our redeemer.  The passage does not give us false hope by saying “if” the devil shall send forth his mighty storms. Rather, it truthfully warns us what to do “when” the devil shall send forth his mighty storms.

So when the storms of strife and contention come - and they will - why do some relationships crumble while others outlast the pounding?

There are probably a lot more semantics to that question than I will ever be able to address here, but my own circumstances point toward Steven Covey’s analogy of the emotional bank account. Covey’s idea of the emotional bank account is based on the law of the harvest. Metaphorically, it states that we should be constantly building our relationship balances (trust) with deposits of genuine appreciation, positive attention, sincere apologies, kept promises  and acts of service. When we make an emotional withdrawal, which can involve criticism, sarcasm, cruelty, or failing to keep promises, we lose a measure of that currency (trust) commensurate with the severity of the action. The only thing that will restore the account to its former balance is a series of subsequent deposits.

Makes sense, right?

You get what you pay for.

Now before you skip ahead of me and quote the Savior’s mandate to forgive others, including our enemies (repentant or not), let’s remember that the idea of the emotional bank account does not represent our willingness to let go of a grudge.

It represents trust.

I think trust runs a little deeper and closer to the heart than what can be accomplished in realm of immediate willpower.

In fact, it is the core of our being….the innermost chamber of our heart.

It is a part of us that cannot be taken by force.

Therefore, trust is something that, in large measure, should be worked out between the parties involved.

This does not mean that God is uninvolved in our trust issues, nor does it give us permission to be ruthless creditors (remember the unjust servant?) or lax in our payment schedules.  The Spirit is always encouraging us to restore our overdrawn accounts to their natural order, whether we are the offender or the one offended. In many such instances, there are significant funds available through the atonement that can act as a permanent “trust fund” if the debt cannot be fully restored.  In most situations, however, there must be a financial investment of our own.

Here’s a short case study:

A few years ago, I got into a major rift with some people I was very close to.  Tempers raged and the sword of truth (more like the dagger of perception) was brandished without much aim or restraint. When the smoke cleared and it was time to survey the damage, I was really surprised by how I felt.  My heart was broken. As I imagined the wasteland that represented the final destination of our bickering, I realized that our emotional account must remain open at all costs. Ironically, the heat of battle had taken me to the perfect place to earn a little currency:  I didn't care anymore who was right. For a guy like me, that’s a heck of a place to earn a few emotional bucks, but it was the start of good things.

Over the next few months, I found that while there were thousands of dollars in trust that had been withdrawn during our dispute, our account was never really in danger of closing out. In fact, there were millions more hidden away somewhere in a safety deposit box that I hadn’t accounted for.  The knowledge of that extra storehouse gave me confidence in making monthly, weekly, and then daily deposits to balance the books. Soon, the emotional bank was thriving and the episode seemed like a bad dream.The point of my mentioning this is simple: though the group I speak of endured a fairly heavy barrage of emotional bank withdrawals, we were prepared for the storm and weathered the buffeting well.

How did we do that?

Somehow, it had happened over decades….in hundreds of things I hadn't really noticed. Conversations, jokes, lunch in the mall, watching TV. Not just shallow, cliché conversations  but good, soul-searching talks. Inside-jokes that probably no one could have understood but us. Things I didn't think about twice while they were happening, but that wound up making us exceedingly rich over time. Fortunately, the story had a happy ending, and we wound up stronger than before the storm occurred.

A few years later, I was involved in a tiff with some other folks in my life. This time, the withdrawal was very minor…maybe a few hundred dollars. The problem was, there was not a huge nest egg sitting in the safety deposit box that could be leveraged against the withdrawal. There were a lot of reasons for that lack of funding - some my fault, some not - but the law of the harvest was pretty quick to pronounce the verdict:

Account overdrawn.

What seemed to be a small thing turned into a big mess.

From the outside looking in, it didn't seem make much sense, but from an insider’s perspective, natural laws were simply running their course. We didn't have a padded trust account because most of our conversations progressed no further than the weather. There certainly weren't many inside jokes among us. Truth be told, awkwardness described our situation better than anything else.  We were a bunch of people meeting up every now and then to exchange pleasantries because we were supposed to. There was an aloof coolness that permeated our dealings, and slowly, surely, the trust dwindled down to a zero balance. When the seemingly insignificant withdrawal came, there was nothing left to cover it.

How did we fix the broken piggy bank? I still haven’t quite figured it out. In the meantime, I have learned some important lessons out of the emotional bank analogy:

1.          Life’s not perfect. Some of the best moments in sports history were made by injured athletes playing through pain. So it is with us. Our relationships will never be perfect in this life, and neither will we. We have to learn to play with pain.
2.       No matter how hard we try, there will always be someone who doesn't like us. Not just a casual, uninformed critic, but one who knows us on a personal level. One who understands exactly what we are about… and spurns us anyway.  That’s OK too.

In the midst these imperfections, there will be joys. For instance, I believe that somewhere out there, each of has one person who can float us a loan to tide us over if we need some emotional currency.  Someone who has looked into our soul, seen all of the heroic good and hellish evil that exists in that space, and loves us anyway.  Someone who will laugh with us when no one else understands what is funny. “Someone,” as the movie said, “with a friendly face.”

In considering the differences between heaven and hell, Emmanuel Swedenborg pointed out that to love people without loving principle was to love evil. The idea sounds harsh, but I think it is probably true. That said, I think our love of people must extend a bit beyond our principles in order to keep it real. Otherwise, isn't our attempt at charity just another performance-based sport? I don’t think we need any more of those than we already have. Until the day when all our accounts are somehow balanced, I have faith that there is an accountant up there that knows a lot more than I do about human nature…and how to overcome it.  He drops me a few dollars here and there when I need it, and bails me out when I’m bankrupt.  He even matches my Christmas club.

Because of Him, I can say that my bank will be open at 9:00 sharp for business tomorrow.

  

Rain or shine.

Or heaven forbid... wind, hail and a mighty storm.