I’m kind of an overachiever.
I grew up in a family where the motto was “You can do whatever you want to do if you want to do it badly enough”.
If you promised to go somewhere, do something, make something, provide something-well you better go, do, make or provide.
NO excuses allowed.
That kind of work ethic does set you apart and help you get ahead.
But it can also set you up for ultimate, catastrophic failure.
Because there will come a moment in every life when events beyond your control overwhelm your heart and prevent you from going, doing, making, providing.
And if your self-worth is built upon a foundation of never letting anyone down, never asking for help, never being needy-well, then you go from feeling worthy to feeling worthless in a heartbeat.
Before Dominic ran ahead to heaven I had short seasons of helplessness due to illness. Those few days and weeks were hard but I knew that I would soon return to the woman I was before and could resume the work that was essential to my feeling worthy of love and respect.
These last years since his departure have proven to be an extended period of helplessness and brokenness that continue to prevent me from doing, doing, doing.
And worse, that have required me to ask for help-over and over and over again.
But you know what I’m learning? I’m learning that my worth is not based on what I can give.
I do not have to earn love. If what I’m getting from others is because of what I do for them, then it’s not real love.
I do not have to justify my existence by working myself to death. If that is the only reason people want me around, then it’s a lousy one.
I’m also learning that refusing help is pride. Pure and simple.
I can wrap it up in any excuse I want, but the root is self-importance and insistence that I can “do it myself” like a defiant two-year-old.
NO ONE can do it all themselves.
We ALL need help.
Asking for it and receiving it gracefully is strength, not weakness.