Lessons I’ve Learned From My Children Pt. 1

If I can’t do something by myself, I should ask for help.

It might sound silly, but I actually had to relearn this lesson recently. One evening, after a particularly frustrating day at work, I was going through the bedtime routine with my four year old daughter. I set out her pajamas and told her to go potty, take off her clothes and put on her pj’s. I left her to it and went to the living room to check on the progress my husband was making with our 2 year old son. Several minutes later I heard fussing coming from her room. When I opened the door, she was sitting on the floor crying. Her pajamas were on, but unzipped.

“Honey, what’s wrong?” I asked. No response. “Sweetie, did you hurt yourself? What’s wrong?” Again, no response. Getting a little frustrated, I helped her to her feet and started looking her over, checking for a new boo-boo. She just stood there crying. I sighed. “I can’t help you unless you tell me what’s wrong.” My beautiful, intelligent little girl (who, by the way, already can read full sentences), flopped down to the floor, grabbed the zipper of her pj’s, which was down near her foot, and yanked it repeatedly, obviously in frustration.

OK. Now I get it. She’s having problems with the zipper. “Do you need help zipping it up?” Still wailing, she nodded her head. “Well, why didn’t you just say so?” I asked, helping her once again to her feet. The zipper was a bit stuck, but it only took a moment for me to fix it and get my daughter properly zipped and ready for bed. “If you need help, all you have to do is ask,” I said in my Mommy Voice. “I don’t know what you need if you don‘t tell me. It’s better to ask for help than to get mad and cry about it.”

Later that night, after the kids were tucked into bed and all was quiet and calm in the house, my husband asked me how my day was. His question opened the floodgate. I began telling him, once again, about how the volume of work flowing onto my desk has become much greater then the volume flowing away from it. I’ve been struggling for months to keep up with it, but it’s a losing battle. The client has become particularly hard to deal with, my boss keeps giving me more and more responsibility (without more pay, I might add) and no one seems to care how buried I’m getting.

Then my husband asked me something that he’s never asked before. “Do they know that you are overwhelmed?”

“Of course they know. How could they not? I mean they keep giving me more and more and more and I’m just supposed to get it all done. How could they not know?”

Suddenly I remembered my conversation only an hour earlier with my daughter. “I don’t know what you need if you don‘t tell me. It’s better to ask for help than to get mad and cry about it.” Realization struck. I’ve been doing exactly what my daughter did, only on a bigger scale.
Somehow, somewhere on my way to being an adult, I decided that I should never have to ask for help. I decided that I should be able to do everything that needs to be done on my own. If, for some reason, I can’t change the transmission on the car, get the grocery shopping done for the week, and respond to all 382 emails impatiently waiting in my inbox at work, all on Saturday morning, then I must be a failure. If I really had it all together, as every other working mother in the world surely does, than I would be able to do all those things and look glamorous at the same time. To admit my inability to multitask every task in my life to perfect completion is to admit a fatal flaw in my character.

I would never look down on another person who needed help, so why do I think that others will do that to me? For that matter, why do I condemn myself for things I would never condemn others for? I guess it’s time to start cutting myself some slack . . . and to start asking for help when I need it.

God will be gracious if you ask for help. He will surely respond to the sound of your cries.