Picture: Jemma hugging “daddy bear”, a stuffed bear that the Army gave her before Tony deployed
It’s a hard topic. Help. How do we accept it humbly and stop insisting we can do everything alone. How do we give it in a way that truly does help. I think about it often. I don’t want to say the wrong thing about it but I don’t want to say nothing about it so I’m going to be brave and try to articulate my thoughts. As a person who has given help poorly and received help poorly and basically just failed at help all around, I know there has to be a better way. Or at least I want to try for one. So here are some thoughts.
1. sometimes in my own life I’ve wanted to help others but maybe not because I truly wanted to maybe more because I felt guilty like I had to. But if I’m being honest, I want others to help me out of a genuine love for me not because they feel they have to. I think we should all do each that same service. I think we should say no to helping others out of guilt. It is exhausting to live a life in the prison of wanting others to see our help.
2. We should say no to busying our lives so much we don’t have time to stop and help others. But we should also realize that help takes sacrifice and is never comfortable or easy.
3. I once had someone I knew who I would see at a weekly function who would say every week, “I want to have you and Tony over for dinner soon.” This happened every single week. And it was always “soon”. It bothered me because this person never, ever followed through with an actual “let’s meet Wednesday at 6 pm does that work for you?”. It was always “soon” (possible translation: when life gets less busy, when you actually become someone I can make time for or maybe this person just didn’t have the social awareness to remember they invited us to dinner 17 times with no follow through). Every interaction has a responsibility on my end. I could have said, hey how about Wednesday? And set a time myself. But the point is the offer of kindness wasn’t followed through with.
4. I think it’s important to others to commit to an act of kindness. Don’t offer if you don’t mean it. Maybe don’t over commit to a million volunteer things. Maybe find what you are really wanting to give to or are passionate about and commit fully to those. Maybe make margin in your life to have time to actually have people over or bring a meal to someone or whatever it might be. I’m saying this because I have over committed. I have been the worst helper to people I’ve cared about. I want to be better.
5. Helping others how they really need help. This is hard. When tony has been gone for the military at times, it is sometimes hard for me to figure out how help is best needed. But when I can communicate it, it’s helpful when others can hear and see what I need most and help meet that need. I think sometimes we help others in the best way we can (meal, time, child care). I think this is amazing. Evaluate how you can help someone and do that. But also evaluate what is most helpful when helping.
6.
I think it also comes down to this: be willing to do the hard things for people. When I was visiting my sister in Texas, a stomach bug hit us all. Jemma was barfing , the baby was crying and it was hard. My sister and her husband didn’t just stand by. They literally cleaned up bits of vomit for me and held the baby so I could rest when the waves of nauseous came over me too (gross but making my point). I needed people to help in ways I didn’t even have the energy to communicate so many times on this deployment. Sometimes I think just having eyes to see how to do the hardest things for people is helpful.
Here’s what helped me most (if you are wondering how to help a friend going through a deployment or just a hard time):
⁃ friends who hung out with me just doing our normal life. (Ex: helped me with putting our babies to sleep, making dinner, the normal stuff)
⁃ Friends who looked me in the eyeballs and said “how are you?” And then actually listened
⁃ Friends who offered to help and then followed through on what I said I needed help with (ex: how’s Wednesday for a meal? How is next Thursday for me to watch your babies)
⁃ Friends who pointed me to Gods truth when the loneliness and the hard and the worry and the fear and the anger became too much
Help is hard. Hard to figure out how to give help to someone sometimes and hard to accept. But I want to be better. Better at accepting it in humility instead of saying “no I’ve got this” and better at being fully committed to giving it to someone. I pray God gives me grace in seeing how to do both. Yes I’ll fail at it. But I hope I can learn how to both give and take help in a way that honors God.
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