On Asking for Help

Asking for help is harder than it should be.

I have spent time trying to understand why — and the answer I keep arriving at is not laziness or pride, though both play their part. It is something more specific: the fear that the need, once named, will be too much. That the person on the other side of the asking will assess it, find it wanting, and withdraw. That to name what you need is to expose yourself to the judgement of someone who may decide your need is inconvenient, excessive, or not really their problem.

And so we manage. We find ways to go without. We tell ourselves it is fine, that we can handle it, that other people have it harder. We perform the competence we do not entirely feel, and we wait for a moment that feels safe enough to say: actually, I am struggling.

The moment rarely arrives on its own.

I have been thinking about the paralytic in Mark 2 — the man whose friends cut a hole in a roof to lower him into the presence of Jesus. He could not get there himself. He required the most creative, determined, possibly embarrassing act of collective advocacy to be brought to the one who could help him. And Jesus, seeing their faith — the faith of the ones who carried him — healed the man and forgave his sins.

He did not heal the man's reluctance to be carried. The man was already on the mat. He had already allowed himself to be the one brought. He had said, in the most tangible possible way: I cannot do this myself. I need help getting to the place where help is.

That was enough.

The asking does not need to be articulate or graceful or well-timed. It does not need to come from a place of confidence. It can be the simple admission: I cannot manage this alone. I need someone to help me get to where the healing is.

Is there something you have been managing alone that you were meant to carry with others? The asking may be harder than the help that follows. But it is where the help begins.