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I have a hard time asking for help when I am unable to do something for myself. But this week, I am weak, attached to an in-house oxygen tube 24/7, and on steroids and antibiotics due to severe bronchitis and extreme asthma. I have had to face up to needing a lot of help. I'll find out in a week's time how long I have to do this. But for now, I am calling in the troops to help with grocery shopping, yard tasks, trash hauling to curb, and so on. It has slammed me face to face with a broken place -- a place that when in I am in need offers up shame or embarrassment as the main feeling.
Silly me. I write about such things. I sincerely and lovingly admonish friends to not feel embarrassed about asking me for help.
An yet in time of need for myself, I cave in to a shadowy place. Somewhere I got the message that I am not supposed to get sick, not supposed to ask others outside of family to help. (As my family is pretty much dead, except for an 86 year old cousin, help from familial quarters is not an option right now.)
Fortunately I am blessed with proactive friends who offer up help. They make it easier for me to say "Yes, thank you." than to have to initiate. (N.B. for the future: Do not just say, "Call me if you need anything." Just offer something. Go down a list. Many people need a lot, and one of the things we need is the ability to pick up that darned phone and ask.)
But this shadow place in me is troubling. To add embarrassment to a physical malady is just not sensible.
But then the armloads of ammunition come to the fore...I am a mature woman, living alone. I should be able to "handle things". I am a feminist, hear me wheeze (roaring is not an asthmatic option right now.) I should just press on, keep trying, do what I can. Somehow I should have magically avoided getting ill during this horrible pollen season.
My friends are busy people, with families of their own. I should not intrude in their lives. (Mind you, my friends have been practically falling over my doorstep with offers of help.)
It may have been a coincidence that this YouTube video arrived on my desk last week. Please listen to at least the first 2:45 of the video before proceeding.
There is something wonderful about that video. I am not suggesting that life is that simple, but what if bits of it really are that easy? What if when I reach for the phone, instead of castigating myself for needing to call someone for help, I "stop it", and instead , I thank God that I have that friend to ask. What if I substitute gratitude for shame? It seems as though I would be much happier, doesn't it?
Maybe I can take the little sniveling, shamed girl inside me to a better place, a place where she sees that genuinely loving people do want to help her-- that being ill is not her fault -- that being a proud woman doesn't mean having to be healthy and able 24/7.
Yet, in that moment of asking, in that display of vulnerability, I grow closer to those dear to me. I show them "the messy places" in my life, the inabilities. And in the asking, we grow closer, and they learn that they can ask me as well. The net of our connection grows stronger through the asking for help. The acknowledgment that we are not all little islands floating alone through life is powerful. Connecting the tears of one to the compassion of another is powerful. That union causes a small ca-chink in the universe as two things join that were meant to -- need and compassion.
It doesn't just take a village to raise a child. It takes a village to raise us all, every minute of our lives. We are all connected. We are all part of the same throb of life. And when I cannot breathe it all in, well, I have people around who help me. And when it is their turn to need help, I'll be there for them.
How hard
