Is help a four letter word?

This is my entry for the PFAM blog Carnival that is hosted this time by the good folks at Possibilism. The subject is "Is help a four letter word?" which is a really good thought provoking topic that I've thought about for several days. This mess below is what I came up with! Sorry if it's a little choppy! I'm having a wicked bad week with cognitive functioning.

asking for help.

I have a hard time asking for help, in previous years I found this task inconceivably hard. My parents have raised me since birth to act, behave and look like a "normal" person. I wasn't given an IEP (individualized education plan) for my vision or learning disabilities, it was not discussed. I was raised to be secretive and ashamed of having a chronic illness or disability. I do not blame my parents, they did the best they could with the limited educational/financial/spiritual resources they had. they raised me to be fiercely independent, to climb on things to reach since I was so short. If it took me 45 minutes to make my bed, that was ok because I was doing it myself. If my siblings BEGGED to help me with it so that we could all go onto bigger and better things like swimming or shopping. The answer was always no, that I had to do it myself because my brother and sister weren't going to move in with me when I was older to do it for me. it was independence at all costs.

no wonder why I feel so stricken to have to ask for help. It's like all my families conditioning, all their expectations of me is being let down because I have failed at being a completely independent woman.

I love to help people, it's my joy to help others and I feel like that is a major reason why God created me. It fills me with such joy. It makes me sad that I can't do as much helping as I used to be able to.

When I was lamenting to a wise friend of mine about how nice it would be to be able to ask and receive help but that I couldn't bring myself to do it.

She said I was robbing someone of the chance to be a blessing to me.

At first when she said it, I got very defensive but the more I thought and prayed about it, I knew she was right. I was preventing someone from having that same feeling by helping me.

Someone once said I was "God with skin on" when I helped them and that phrase has stuck in my head ever since. We are the hands and feet of God and everything we do should be for the Glory of God.

here is a poem about the subject of being the hands and feet of Christ...

a prayer of St.Teresa of Avila
Christ has no body now but yours,
No hands, no feet, on earth but yours.
Your are the eyes through which He looks
Compassion on this world
Yours are the feet
With which He walks to do good.
Your are the hands
With which He blesses all the world
Yours are the hands, yours are the feet.
Yours are the eyes, you are His body.
Christ has no body now but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours
Yours are the eyes, through which He Looks
compassion on the world.
Christ has no body now on earth but yours.

So my dear brothers and sisters with chronic illness/pain, when you need help, please do not feel ashamed or embarrassed. You are allowing God to bless you and show His love to you.

SO is help a four letter word? yep, you bet! but LOVE is also...

Soli Deo Gloria
REformed girl