Fleas and the Road to Recovery

I want to tell you about a flea infestation. And then I want to tell you about the hopelessness of relational recovery. But first I want to tell you a story about Howard Thurman. 

Howard Thurman had an encounter in St. Louis where he was not permitted to stay at the hotel he thought he’d be staying while there for a speaking engagement. He had been invited by the National Methodist Student Conference to speak on “The Sources of Power for Christian Living,” not simply race relations, as was often the case for the intellectual and influential Black man, and so it seemed to him a bit of a breakthrough. However, the sponsor of the conference and the facilitator of the lodging was naive enough to miss the obvious. Howard Thurman was Black and Black men were not allowed to sleep in the hotel he had booked. 

Howard Thurman found out about the racist situation, a perpetuation of the segregated state of the United States in the late 1930’s, prior to delivering his evening address. When he arrived to preach about Jesus and the role of Jesus in the lives of the disinherited he informed his mixed-race audience about what had happened to him hours before. Thurman was a committed truth teller. He then presented his message and upon finishing, went immediately to the train station. He was on his way to Ohio for his next speaking engagement (what turned out to be a pivotal presentation in the development of his original ideas) and thus decided to sleep at the station and on the train. While Thurman was waiting at the station the organizer of the conference came to find him and profusely apologized. Thurman appreciated the sentiment and received his apology, but he did not return to any lodging in St. Louis. That train had left the station. He later lamented, “recovery from such things is most difficult.” 

In essence, how do you renew trust with a person, or group of people, after a blatant breaking of the trust? 

Recently, our yard (and our dog and occasionally the inside of our house and the kittens who’ve made a home in our yard) has become infested with fleas. This is the first time in my entire life suffering under the wrath of these salt-sized creatures. When I take one step into my side yard, it appears I have donned knee high, black spotted knickers. Biting socks. The other day I found a flea in my chest hair. This is to say nothing of the incessant complications in keeping the fleas off of our 11 year old dog and out of the house. 

It is a strange sensation to think you are always covered in fleas even when you are camping 200 miles and 7000 feet away from the infestation. The fleas own space in my psyche as the sensation of crawling bugs tickles my leg hair. And not a flea to be found. 

Broken trust is like this. Always feeling a sensation that the offense is crawling on your skin, into your brainwaves, and across your chest. Is something biting at my ankles? Recovery from such things is most difficult. When trust is dissolved, a surprise infestation that started somewhere else, the recovery is costly. 

In order to contain our flea problem we began slowly, if not a bit haphazard, buying a spray for the house and the dog, imagining it would all resolve itself. It did not. So we purchased more potent sprays for the outside yard, and flea killing droplets to try and place on the stray cats (envision my wife slipping on gloves and trying to surprise three nursing kittens!), and a flea shampoo to scrub our dog, and an oral medicine to feed her with her food. 

Dear God, we prayed, repel these fleas. 

In this round of financial investment we watched the costly suffering expand. In order to spray our yard with the killing spray we purchased, we’d need to spray far and wide. We did this, but the next day found, to our dismay, so many crawly creatures had died in our attempt to eradicate the fleas. And guess what? The fleas remained. The work of eradicating the infestation was now all consuming, impacting our sleeping and working and eating. We relented and called a professional in the pest control industry. 

Angel, fittingly named, arrived and informed us he would need to spray the yard with his professional skills and equipment one time for each of the next seven weeks. The cost mounted. 

The ongoing saga of the flea infestation parallels the hopelessness of relational recovery. First, like in the case of the organizer for Thurman’s speaking engagement, a humble acknowledgement is required. I am not thinking of an apology, per say, but a posture of spirit. One might admit, the flea predicament is real. Second, it would seem an actual apology, named and specific, would need to follow. We cannot fix the infestation on our own. And then third, the one who has received the infestation of broken trust, is able to discern how to proceed. In Thurman’s case, he rode the train telling the truth of his reality: Recovery from such things is most difficult. 

We can receive the apology, accept it and store it in our spirit, but to recover the relationship is to admit we might forever be scratching at our legs contaminated by the invisible fleas.