There is nothing easy about this. All our life we work towards the goal of being independent, completely independent. With each step we take we becoming stronger and more self-sufficient. We are no longer trapped by the confines of needing others, and yet at the moment, I must defy every part of me and do the opposite. I feel as if I am no longer a person, but rather only the shell of one. Instead of reaching for the goal of being more and more independent, I growing more dependent by the day. I fear the words that I must say, "I need help."
Three little words. One would not think they are so difficult. No one can be completely independent. Everyone needs someone, but when every aspect of your life depends on someone else, this takes on a completely different essence. Someone helps me do just about everything all day long, and at times it cuts into me. It tears me down. In a time in my life, when I would typically be going off and proving my idenependence - getting a job that I did all by myself, becoming an expert in my own career, living on my own, handling my own relationship, possibly creating new life myself and stearing them towards the goal of becoming independent; instead I become more dependent each day. Help me dress. Help me bathe. Help me eat. Help me breathe.
I started dressing myself when I was one years old, and I know I have to ask help to put on and take off my pants. Nov I get in trouble if I do it myself because it is seen as wasting my energy and because that is what the aids are for. However, it is very disconcerting to need to have someone help us. As a society as a whole we want to be completely independent. We don't want to "need help", and this is why asking for help is so hard. But God never intended us to be completely independent. If He had intended us to live and be completely independent, He would have made us solitary beings each on our own private island to have no interaction with anyone. but that is not how He made us. He made us to lie with people, and our survival depend on their survive.
Asking for help is one of the hardest thighs we have to do. Three simple words, "I" "Need" "Help". Why? Why are they so hard to say, when in reality none of them is longer than 4 letters strung together. Yet when we say those words "I need help", we feel weak. We are ashamed at needing someone else for help. We are ashamed and feel like a burden to others. But none of this is true. Needing help, especially needing help as I now do, is a very humbling experience. You are purring your care into the hands of someone else, giving them the control that you have into their hands. This is very difficult for us. For some reason, we are always trying to prove that we need no one and can do everything by ourselves.
I think back to when Mary Magdalene washed Jesus' feet. It has always been viewed as something Jesus did for her, as if she wasn't even close at being the same caliber of human. But now that I have become so dependent on the help others, I realize what a humbling experience it must have been for Jesus. He had to take his trust and put in Mary. He had to give up the instinct t just do it for her instead of letting her do it for him.
In some ways having someone care for me is similar. I have to trust in them. It is hard to give up that control. Some things are so ingrained within you that you don't even consider having someone else do it. I've pulling up my pants for 28 years, Similarly, I clear off the table without even thinking. It's not that I don't need the help, but things are just automatic. It is the reason I typed up the way I like things to be done. I must gave up control, be humbled, and let them do what they are meant to do. I must learn to say.. "I need help."
