Pay It Foward

Last month when Chad was staying with Patrick & Kacy, he told me about a day that the neighbor was outside struggling to lay several pallets of sod by himself. Patrick, Chad and another neighbor went over and helped this guy lay out his yard. Obviously this guy was appreciative but Chad just went on and on about how good it felt to help him out.

Today, Chad was that man; outside struggling in his yard. He rented an agar to dig our fence post holes and was outside struggling to use it alone when our neighbor donned his work gloves and came over to help.

Today, I was that person too. In the midst of a huge hormonal breakdown about boxes and boxes and a bored Ellie and a messy house, Kacy called to see if she could take Ellie for the day. I pushed back all my tears and accepted, pretending it was no big deal. Why can't I just admit that I'm struggling? I don't feel good, in fact, I feel bad. I just want to crawl into bed and sleep until the start of my second trimester. I'm a yo-yo of emotions between thrilled about new starts and devastated about change.

Why is it so humbling to ask for help? We know that we aren't created to go at life alone. Scripture is full of examples: a help-meet, cousins, tribes, daughters-in-law, disciples and on and on but for some reason we are fooled into believing that we must be a failure if we are unable to carry the load alone. I do pretty well with the outright lies of Satan. It's the sneaky whispers that always get me.

Today I learned (again) that true friends are the ones who make you accept help even when you're convinced you shouldn't need it...even if in the big scheme of things, boxes just don't matter.