Strength Required

So often we think that the thing that requires the greatest strength on the part of an individual is to bear our personal struggles silently, stoically, all the jagged edges hidden behind the mask and tucked away where nobody can see the wound can heal.  Sometimes, though, there are fractures of such magnitude that we can't just cover it over and wait for the distant light of morning.  Sometimes strong and silent just isn't strong at all.

There is a greater strength required of us on occasion, but it comes with a pain even sharper at first than that of the wound.  We have to admit that we aren't capable of doing it all ourselves, that we aren't all-powerful, all-capable.  We have to lay down both our weapons and our shields, lay down our pride, and reach out to somebody to ask for help. For me, there is no action more frustrating, no lesson that is harder to learn.  In fact, I still have to remind myself constantly that it is not a weakness but an incredible act of trust and strength to reach out to another and allow all those who love me to help me when I cannot do it myself. 

I think I should be able to do it all myself, you see.  I don't want to burden anybody else. It's my responsibility.  I don't want to take time, really, to have to ask anybody else to work me into their busy schedule, and I know all my friends already have so much on their plates... All of these excuses regularly appear in my rationale for trying to stumble along under my own power long after I know that I should have called for reinforcements.

The temptation is always to wait one more day, try to do one more task, try to keep one more juggler's ball in the air, but the simple truth is that sometimes I can't.  Sometimes none of us can.  Wisdom comes when we realize that we need somebody else before we drop all the balls, fail at all those tasks and reach out ahead of time for a hand to stabilize us.  And those hands are everywhere.  Even at our darkest moments, those hands are all around us if we look for them.  Some of them are friends we've known forever, people who are only a phone call away.  Some of them are people put into a specific location for just that one moment of our need, that hand in place for that one emergency grasp and rescue. 

When we can learn to recognize our own breaking point and do the hard thing, sacrifice our own vanity and pride to reach out before we reach it, we actually become stronger.  We forge stronger bonds between ourselves and those we love.  We teach ourselves humility, that most vital and bitter of all the lessons.  We also save ourselves from ourselves; we keep our hands off the steering wheel when it's better not to drive, and sometimes that's the only choice to make.  All strength is gained through some work, something given up, something given away.