asking for help

Growing Up

Samantha Gratton

I’m not sure when you get to start calling yourself a grown-up. Is it after you hit a certain age or buy your first car? When you pay taxes or eat vegetables all on your own? What is it that classifies you as such?

The hubby and I were writing a song together recently about someone stuck in the Badlands and it made me stop to consider. The intensity and beauty and death in that land is unmistakeable. The summer before 5th grade, my family took a road trip through South Dakota and that trip has had a lasting impacts on me for whatever reason. The desolate wasteland, the beauty of the rock formations and massive bison roaming a land where battles were fought and forgotten lives lay buried.

Maybe being a grown-up means you realize when you are in the Badlands. When you survey the land and find it dead, with little prospects for growth. You look left and right only to find you’ve brought others with you to a dark and desolate place. You can’t continue on pretending you are surrounded by life and lush vegetation. You have a thirst for truth and seek it. When you say, there’s more to life than this waste and ruin I’ve grown accustomed to, and will do whatever it takes to flee from it. Even if it means asking for help and admitting failure.

That, to me, is a grown-up.

Autonomous

Samantha Gratton

With this move, we’ve had less people to lean on in certain regards, making it so much more apparent when we do ask for help. It’s embarrassing and awkward to reach out and say, “I barely know you, but I need you!”

But something I’ve realized is that in those moments, awkward and uncomfortable as they may be, we bond with people. We reach beyond our comfort level and into a level of trust, whether we want to or not. That’s where relationships are formed. That’s the same moment that we realize we can’t do it on our own.

Do I wish I could just go through my day without asking for help? YES! I want to be able to do it all and do it all now. I hate the feeling of discomfort and disadvantage as I ask yet again for help from a stranger. But how would I ever meet people or make friends or grow or learn?

I think it works that way with God sometimes, too. We need him all the time, but when we can’t do it on our own, it becomes incredibly more apparent that we are mere human beings. We can’t control our lives as much as we (I) want to. We can’t do it on our own. Because if we could, it’d be incredibly lonely and unfulfilling. The days we can get to work without a ride or find a restaurant without advice doesn’t connect us with the people around us. It’s incredibly important to our relationships to need people and to be needed. So when we say to God that “we don’t need him”, that’s not really a great way to build a relationship. (Also, it’s not true, but that’s a whole ‘nother thing). When we go about living our lives though without turning to him, trusting in him, asking for him and relying on him—isn’t that what we’re saying though? That we don’t need him?

For whatever reason, we think we want to be independent and autonomous, both with people and with God. It’s as if admitting that we aren’t able to do it all without help would mean we were weak. Or that needing some help makes us inadequate or unintelligent. But that simply isn’t true. Sure, sometimes it’s humbling and even awkward to ask for help, but living life without it is a far worse scenario. Life without people in it is void. Life without friends is lonely and overwhelming. Life without a God who loves you is lacking. It doesn’t make you stronger; it’s empty when it doesn’t have to be.