A common conversation:
“How are you?”
“I’m Fine – Busy – Living the dream – Can’t complain – Better than I deserve – I’m OK how are you doing? – Another day, another dollar – Same stuff, different day”
Ugh.
I understand where these responses come from, I will even give you those answers at times.
But WHY?
How about these , “Need anything? Anything I can do for you? How can I support you?”
“I’m OK, but thanks. Nothing comes to mind. I’m good.”
What if there was a different strategy? Dare I judge a better strategy? Here’s my invitation. What would it look like to actively look for ways to have others support you?
I tried this on the last weekend I staffed. Anytime someone said, “Do you need anything?” Or “Anything I can do for you?” I stopped what I was doing and would assess what support could look like at that moment. One time I asked them to pray for me. One time I asked them to put their hands on my chest and let me lean into them to feel their support on my body. It was an intentional and conscious choice to move into being supported instead of my well-worn rut of just saying, “I am OK,” and moving on.
Sometimes I think it can be true that I am doing well, and I don’t have an ask to let someone support me. What I am beginning to explore in myself is that, for me, this is often deflection at best and downright laziness at worst. I am too prideful or lazy to slow down and ask myself, my mind, my will, my body what support could look like. I don’t want to be needy. I tell myself, “Everyone else has too much on their plate. I shouldn’t take up space.”
It feels like when someone greets me with the phrase, “How are you doing?” If it is being asked by a fellow TCMG alum, I often ask if they want the Cross Ministry Group answer or the Christian platitude answer? You know, “God is good, all the time, amen?” What I am really asking them is, do they have space for me to share how I am really doing or are they just saying hello?
How does this show up in your life? There are two ways I have identified that this self-reliance shows up in my life. It is very rampant but the two areas I will talk through are in my relationship with God and with others.
WITH GOD
With God I am often very self-reliant. Why is this? Why do I choose to pull away? In the Three Selves talk on the weekend we show the image of our broken self holding our good and holy desires, pulling away from God and sitting alone apart from God. Most of the time that reality is why I choose to not walk relying on the support of God. I am choosing my brokenness, defended by my false selves, to be my strategy. Here is one way this plays out in my life.
A mentor of mine died from COVID just a few years ago. This man was a true apostle of Christ. His Bible was so gloriously marked up from years of study. He was also a man of action. He started a ministry (Joshua Nations) that offered a two-year Bible training curriculum to equip church leaders and planting churches. This curriculum was used in more than 80 countries and 8,600 schools throughout the world. I studied at the Bible School where he was the Dean before he launched this ministry. When he got sick, word spread, and the heavens were filled with prayers from all of these nations. He got COVID from going on a trip to Africa with his grandson to further the ministry’s work. When he died I was devastated. It was one of the very low points in my walk with God.
Grief. Pain. Loss.
Why him? I had just spoken to him about how he had been given a plan from the Lord for the next 15 years of his life and all that God was calling him into. I was bitter and angry. I was broken. So, I clung to my holy desire of wanting intimacy with God and now not knowing if I could choose to sit in the pain of his death with God. My isolator came online to protect me from the pain. If I don’t think about the situation I don’t have to feel the pain of unanswered prayer.
It wasn’t much relief, but I was challenged with this thought by someone else who knew him and was also grieving. She made the statement, ”Maybe God wanted him on the other side of the battle instead of battling here on Earth.” It didn’t take the pain away, but it did offer a perspective that I am still chewing on all these years later. He had a phrase he loved to say, that his call to evangelize the nations was to “charge hell with a water pistol, until the trumpet blows.” This sits on the wall by my desk as a reminder of him and a call in my life to keep pressing forward.
So, what does it look like to step into sitting in the river of grace with Jesus and my pain? Not bypassing or deflecting. Just being with him. For me that looks like choosing to pause and just be with God. To wait upon the Lord. It feels so mechanical and forced at times, but when I choose to sit with him consistently, I do feel his presence more. I have begun to be aware that I have pulled away when I am not regularly meeting with God. Some days it is a candle flickering, some days it is a worship song, I even have a pursuit journal that I have done two days of writing in over the last few months. Notice the grind in that. Two days is still two points of connection with God that I didn’t have before.
Will you risk believing that God is standing at the door knocking? “God is closer to us than we are to ourselves” is a profound theological concept, famously articulated by St. Augustine.
WITH OTHERS
I told my R-group last night that “I hide from men by going to R-group and staffing weekends.” This is one way that I can serve and support without having to step in and be supported. How dare I not let others have the chance to bear my burdens and instead just think it is my job to be the savior, the martyr, or the servant. In our R-group we use a scale of 1-5 to determine who wants to do work each week. 1 on the scale is I have low need and a 5 means I really need to do work tonight. Here is my personal jaded, judgmental, scale I often use for rating if I want to do work during R-group. A 1on the scale is “I am pretending I am fine and don’t want to be vulnerable, I don’t want to take up space, or I’m too ashamed to admit I need help.” 5 is like saying “I am a weak human who can’t figure out life on my own and I can’t believe I can’t get my life together and I am not further along where I should be. I am fine, it’s all fine, everything is alright.”
We are challenging our group to change the scale to this, a rating of 5 is humbly saying, “Of course I want the support of my close allies in life who are waiting for a chance to support me.” While a rating of 1 is “I do feel connected to God’s peace tonight and it may be my chance to support another brother.”
Please God, let me feel the support of my community. Let me press into their strength and the truth that You are inside of them to minister to me. Lessen my ego and pride that wants self-reliance. Help me to risk believing that it is You in them who is ministering to me.
Finally – One way to practically ask for help.
We have adopted this in our R group and many times over the last year someone has just sent this simple text out to our group. “Do you have 8 minutes?” Who is waiting for you to show up in their world for 8 minutes. Who is in your world that can hold space for you for 8 minutes. This short clip helps explain it further.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/-IcQ2QFrSA4
How is this landing on you? What could it look like to move towards support rather than self reliance. Would you try this concept out in your world? When someone asks you how you are doing, or if you need support, would you pause and ask your heart, soul, mind, and strength(body) what support would look like and then risk receiving that very support? I am sure you are “fine”, but what if you chose instead to receive the gift of connection and support from that person who is offering to be with you in life.