Learning to Receive

Learning to Receive

I have noticed that many women who are generous and consistent in their care for others find it surprisingly difficult to be on the receiving end. To accept help without immediately redirecting the conversation. To receive a kindness without feeling the need to repay it before the other person has even left the room.

There is something in us that resists the position of the one who needs. Needs feel like liabilities. We have been taught, in a thousand small ways, that self-sufficiency is a virtue.

But scripture does not support this reading of the world. Jesus received the anointing of the woman with the perfume — extravagant, costly, misunderstood by everyone in the room — and defended her: She has done a beautiful thing to me. (Matthew 26:10) He received hospitality from Mary and Martha. He asked for water from the Samaritan woman at the well. He allowed others to give to him.

There is something in the posture of receiving that requires humility. To say: I need this. I cannot manage without it. I will not deflect your kindness.

And there is something in it that mirrors how we receive from God — not as the self-sufficient who occasionally allow grace to supplement their efforts, but as those who are genuinely in need of what only He can give.

Are you able to receive today — from God, from the people around you? The willingness to need is not weakness. It is honesty, which is where grace has room to work.